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Black God, White Devil

Screening: Monday 11 June, 6:30pm

Black God, White Devil (Glauber Rocha, Brazil 1963) [Deus e o diabo na terra do sol]

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. In near-hallucinatory images of astonishing power, and based in part on actual incidents, Rocha depicts the saga of two peasants, Manuel and Rosa, and a charismatic black beato, or messianic priest, whose authority threatens that of the Catholic Church and local landowners.

Antonio das Mortes is hired to eliminate the “black god”; in an interesting twist, the job is done for him. When the priest’s hunger-crazed followers are led to a massacre at the hands of government troops, Manuel and Rosa, the sole survivors, find a new leader in the cangaceiro Corisco, heroic bandit-champion of the oppressed. And so the loop closes: Corisco, the “white devil,” will be Antonio das Mortes’s next victim.

“Black God, White Devil is the most beautiful thing I have seen in more than a decade, filled with a savage poetry.” — Luis Buñuel.

Written by Rocha, Walter Lima Junior, Paulo Gil Soares. Photographed by Waldemar Lima. With Geraldo del Ray, Yoná Magalháes, Othon Bastos, Lidio Sylva.

(35mm, B&W, 120 mins, In Portuguese with English subtitles)

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