"This History of Brazil, in seven one-hour chapters, is an educational film especially aimed at television, primary schools and why not universities too? A history lesson for anybody aged from 12 to 120, Europeans, Americans, Asians, Arabs, Africans. It is for all those interested in an integrated vision of the 473 years of Brazil's existence, a vision which Brazilians mostly lack. Why not admit that Brazilians have always lived alienated from, or misinformed about, the history of their country? I have studied all the main components of the period from 1500 to 1973: economic, political, social.
And the synopsis has been produced from the specialized Brazilian bibliography and all the international literature I was able to consult during an entire year of research. I realized that nobody had produced a resumé of all aspects of the history of Brazil... The hardest thing was therefore to reintegrate all these elements into the famous "Brazilian chaos", a chaos which never existed: the creation and fruit of ignorance defended and fed by the exterior, an instrument of alienation which is largely responsible for our lack of culture and the mediocrity of our university training. In seven hours of film, I want to create a chronological description revealing the determining structures, the roots of Brazilian problems. Il is obvious that I do not pretend to present a definitive version, partly because of the precarious nature of existing documentation.
But I think that this film might serve as a starting point for the development of a schema which will provide interested parties with a more precise and scientific comprehension of Brazil... I have used the most varied and expressive material that I could find to make this History of Brazil into virtual information. The popular and erudite iconography, the journalistic or social testimony photo, the documentary or fictional cinematic image: the maximum of images produced by Brazilians from all periods in their history. Each shape, every plastic, rational or spontaneous element, interested me and served as testimony or as a document, without mental restrictions about who created it: the important thing being that the artist and his work are related to Brazilian reality. With this experiment that I unhesitatingly describe as modern and innovative, I hope to give a pratical and didactic function to the cinema that I produce from now on. For me the cinema has ceased to be only art : it is much more than that... I don't want to continue to exploit popular ignorance. One of the things that distanced me from Brazilian cinema was the deformation suffered by a movement of renewal like Cinema Novo. The current industry founded on the model which affirmed itself in 1962 and 1968 has betrayed the original principles. It is estimated today that Brazilian cinematic production as one of the most flourishing in the Third World, with one hundred titles on average each year, but this production has been transformed into an instrument of exploitation of popular ignorance and exists in a contradictory way from the paternalism of the National Cinema Institute. It is an alienated model with which I don't wish to be identified.
Glauber Rocha, écran 74, no 23, mars 1974
in Théâtres au cinéma/Glauber Rocha. Bresilan Cinema Anthology,
from the 1960's to the 1980's, Nelson Rodrigues - Magic Cinema Collection