Slides for Lecture 2 on Myths of Origin

1. Rachel Randall
Brazilian Cinema Lecture 2
27th January 2014
mYths of Origin:
Meetings between The European and the índio

2. ‘Iracema’
- Fortaleza, Ceará.

3. José de Alencar’s 1865 novel, Iracema,
surrounded by further depictions of the story’s protagonist.

4. ‘Cannibalist Manifesto’
(‘Manifesto antropófago’)
Quotations:
‘Tupi or not Tupi, that is the
question.
‘Down with Anchieta singing of the
eleven thousand virgins of
Heaven, in the land of Iracema.’
‘Down with the histories of Man
that begin at Cape Finisterre.’
- 1928.
Painting of Oswald de Andrade by
Tarsila do Amaral (1922).

5. From left to right: an art installation by
Hélio Oiticica; the cover of Caetano
Veloso’s Tropicália; and a scene from
Como era gostoso o meu francês.
Examples of:
‘Troplicalismo’

7. ‘The film persistently inverts the traditional, positive romantic trope
of the encounter between the Indian and the European.’

8. Forest fires and deforestation become a visual trope

9. A ‘Transamazônica’
A map which shows the parts
of the Transamazonian
Highway still under
construction.
Google maps satellite
Image of deforestation
next to the Transamazônica

10. Design for one of Iracema’s
original DVD covers.

11. [Insert a still of forest on fire]

12. Images from and cover of Humberto Mauro’s
O Descobrimento do Brasil.

14. Left: Engravings by Théodorus de Bry;
Right: Woodcut from Hans Staden’s book.

16. At this point history took such a strange turn that I am
surprised no novelist or scenario-writer has as yet made
use of it. What a film it would make! A handful of
Frenchmen… [who] now found themselves alone on a
continent as unfamiliar as a different planet, knowing
nothing of the geographical circumstances or the natives,
incapable of growing food to keep themselves alive,
stricken with sickness and disease and depending for all
their needs on an extremely hostile community whose
language they could not understand… were caught in a
trap of their own making.’
- Claude Lévi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques

17. ‘Lá no mar pelejei, de maneira que nenhum
tupiniquim ficou vivo. Estendidos ao longo da
praia, rígidamente, os mortos ocuparam
cêrca de uma légua.’
– Mem de Sá,
Governador-Geral do Brasil 1557