Barravento, entre tese e forma

Abstract

Barravento (1962) is the first feature film by Glauber Rocha, one of the key directors of the Brazilian Cinema Novo. A trip to the community of fishermen, Xaréu, on the coast of Bahia, and the sudden awareness of the local poverty, with all the setbacks in the production of the film, were decisive for an awakening of an acute critical perspective in its author. The signature ambiguity of the film is born on the one hand by a radical and revolutionary political vision, according to which the mystical worldview of Yoruba religion was alienating, and on the other hand of the anthropological contemplation of a local experience. This tension reflects much of the spirit of modernity and vanguard that took over the Soteropolitan social environment with the creation of the University of Bahia, during the formative years of the filmmaker. The tension goes on in the following years in the intellectual consciousness of Glauber and finds an expressive synthesis in the manifesto-thesis “Eztetyka of the Hunger”, of 1965.