The best Arduíno Colassanti’s movies

Quilombo dos Palmares was a real-life democratic society, created in Brazil in the 17th century. This incredibly elaborate (and surprisingly little-known) film traces the origins of Quilombo, which began as a community of freed slaves. The colony becomes a safe harbor for other outcasts of the world, including Indians and Jews. Ganga Zumba (Toni Tornado) becomes president of Quilombo, the first freely elected leader in the Western Hemisphere. Naturally, the ruling Portuguese want to subjugate Zumba and his followers, but the Quilombians are ready for their would-be oppressors. The end of this Brave New World is not pleasant, but the followers of Zumba and his ideals take to the hills, where they honor his memory to this day. Writer/director Carlos Diegues takes every available opportunity to compare the rise and fall of Quilombo with the state of affairs in modern-day Brazil.

A shockingly irreverent follow-up to the rural austerity of Barren Lives, dos Santos’ Godardian social satire owes more than a nod to the self-conscious antics of the French New Wave. The pampered son of a general, El Justicero is a hipster playboy who fancies himself a James Bond/Jean Paul Sartre urban hero. “Archetypical” yet “full of contradictions,” he sees that justice is achieved for the disadvantaged while taking advantage of certain bourgeois perks. His exploits are closely followed and eventually directed by his biographer who decides a film is not only more lucrative than a book, but it gives him the luxury of reviewing previous scenes. Unlike Bond, El Jus eventually experiences an awakening which threatens to compromise the entertainment value and glamour of his life story. - Harvard Film Archive

In an empty city, scorched by the sun, the young and old confuse the fever of sunstroke with the delicate birth of passion. Like ghosts, they hover around buildings and endless flatlands in search of the ever elusive love. Inspired by 19th century Russian short stories, the plots weave and unravel together in the improbable city of Brasilia – a distorted mirror-image of the Soviet utopia – located in the heart of the Brazilian desert.

"Portraits and excerpts from Brazilian films from all times. Actors, directors and images that affirm cinema."

An extended research tour of US university film programs introduced dos Santos to the American avant-garde filmmakers, among them Jonas Mekas and Stan Brakhage, who would directly inspire his formally radical adaptation of an allegorical short story about adultery and colonialism by Guilherme de Figueiredo. Filmed in both Manhattan and Brazil and set against the background of the Vietnam War and its protests, Hunger for Love uses a rigorously abstract soundtrack and narrative structure to evoke the acute paranoia of the period building up to the December 1968 military coup that tipped Brazil perilously close to a conservative dictatorship. With its harsh critique of the decadent tendencies of the Sixties counterculture, Hunger for Love offers a key expression of the self-consciously “ideological” phase of Cinema Novo. -Harvard Film Archive

In a small town in the State of Minas Gerais, Brazil, a woman rebels against local morality after her child dies, with tragic results.

German documentary for TV about the "Cinema Novo" movement (Brazilian New Wave). Director Joaquim Pedro de Andrade focuses on six Cinema Novo filmmakers working in Rio in 1967.

The film tells the story of an intuitive, adventurous man who loved his country and being Brazilian. This man fought to be loyal to himself. His music is a transparent portrait of his genius, intuition, freedom, adventure and passion for Brazil.

In another literary adaptation – this time Machado de Assis’ novella O Alienista – and his first color film, dos Santos unleashes an extravagant, maddening excoriation of Brazil’s military dictatorship of the 1970s. As usual, the director exploits all cinematic constituents in his palette – a radically intrusive and discordant soundtrack, non sequitur editing, exaggerated camera angles and all manner of carnivalesque pageantry – to illustrate the tale of a doctor/priest on a mission to discover truth through the study of madness. The population of his asylum grows as his definition of sanity fluctuates until it finally threatens to incorporate the entire town. The film’s own irrational reversals and allegorical codes gleefully mock the arbitrariness of authoritarianism in all its varied guises. -Harvard Film Archive

Chronicles the life of a 17 year-old girl living in the upper-class Rio de Janeiro neighbourhood of Ipanema. Márcia lives a life of parties and spend her days among bohemians, musicians and intellectuals. While seeming happy in the outside, she's extremely anguished inside. Based on the famous song by Antonio Carlos Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes.

Married woman only feels well when she's in love. In search of a ravishing love, she has many love affairs, with her husband's consent.

Couple whose marriage is at stake delve into the past, with the help of a diary and some home movies. In these movies, Helena, the woman's suicidal friend, has an important role.

Year 2000. Brazil was partially devastated by the Third World War. An immigrant family arrives in a small town, which they call "I Forgot." The trio is recruited by an indigenist to pretend to be indigenous during the visit of a general. In the dilemma of integrating into the system or preserving individual freedom, the family moves toward disintegration as the city prepares to launch a space rocket.

Fantasy comedy about Brazilian writer Oswald de Andrade, one of the most important icons of Modernism in Brazil. In the film, Oswald is played by two actors: Ítala Nandi, as his feminine anima, and Flávio Galvão, as the masculine half.

The critical success in France of How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman made possible dos Santos’ delirious science-fiction vision of free love in a post-apocalyptic wilderness besieged by flesh hungry zombies contaminated by an unnamed nuclear attack. Who is Beta? follows two statuesque survivors drawn irresistibly together only to be entranced by the arrival and sudden disappearance of a third, the bewitching raven haired Beta. With its cartoon-like depiction of extreme violence and desire, Who is Beta? offers a heady Pop-infused companion to Hunger for Love. Yet beneath its giddy play of surfaces, dos Santos' underappreciated film gradually reveals a darkly ambiguous metaphoric dimension. -Harvard Film Archive

The life of Fernão Dias, a 17th century Brazilian frontiersman known as "the Emerald Hunter".