Showcase of Brazilian Cinema: Black God, White Devil (1964)

Join us for three days as we showcase 5 films that encapsulate Brazil’s rich cinematic culture and history! A limited number of passes are available to see all five films for one low price!

A landmark work of militant cinema and a key film of the Cinema Novo movement, the then-25-year-old Glauber Rocha’s second feature begins in the 1940s as a ranch laborer named Manoel (Geraldo Del Ray) finds himself in conflict with his boss, who is trying to stiff him on payment; Manoel kills the boss and heads out on the lam with his wife (Yoná Magalhães). The two become self-styled outlaws and, later, join up with self-appointed saint Antonio das Mortes (Mauricío de Valle), who preaches a gospel of meeting the violence of the world with still more violence. A film at once alluringly mystical and radically political, Black God, White Devil interweaves documentary elements and iconoclastic formal experimentation to yield one of world cinema’s all-time great shots across the bow.

With its roots in the legends and folk traditions of northeastern Brazil, Black God, White Devil is an epic exorcism of the violence and hunger-fed cultural derangements that have scarred that barren region for centuries.

Directed by Glauber Rocha

1964 | Brazil | Portuguese language with English subtitles | DCP