Anecy Rocha

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

During the Carnival, in Niterói, the son of a Lira do Delírio nightclub dancer is kidnapped. With the help of a journalist friend, she dives into Rio de Janeiro's underworld and meet all kind of criminals. She also goes back in time, to a past carnival, where she thinks she might pin-point the culprit among a group of people.

When a prominent U.S. Nobel Laureate arrives in Salvador, Bahia, the city with the largest black population in Brazil, he stirs emotions by championing a long-forgotten local writer named Pedro Archanjo, who believed that humanity would be improved only through miscegenation.

An ubiquitous folk singer narrates the tale of a young boy, who apparently becomes immune to gunfire after his mother arranges for him to have an amulet bearing Ogum's blessings. As time goes by, he becomes a valuable member of a mobster's hit-team, but ends up joining a group of people who resist his original employers.

Adaptation of José Vicente's play "O Assalto" (The Theft). Bank clerk and a janitor meet at work in the middle of the night, when the first decides to rob the bank's safe.

Old couple are being evicted and turn to their five children for help. Since no one can accommodate the two of them, the children decide to separate the couple.

A gang of bandits led by Faustão intervene in a fight between two members of rival families, the Pereiras and the Araújos. Henrique Pereira, son of Colonel Pereira, is wounded in an ambush. Faustão rescues him and demands the father to pay a ransom in exchange for the life of his son. The bandit makes it clear to Henrique that he is not a prisoner and that he is only obeying the law of the backlands. Lucena, a henchman working for the Araújos, finds Faustão and offers twice the amount being asked to the colonel in order to take Henrique as a prisoner, but the bandit refuses the offer. Colonel Henrique pays the ransom, but the son refuses to return home, even being aware of the feud between his family and the Araújos. The young man chooses to join the gang.

The eccentric members of a wealthy Brazilian family each go through personal torment, debauchery and intense guilt in this symbolic and gory film. The father has made a fortune in the slaughterhouse business and ignores the feelings of his wife and his workers. He frequents a mulatto woman, who is always seen naked. His daughter and her friend act on their lesbian fantasies before her friend marries her brother. An elderly aunt seduces the brother before she drowns herself in the swimming pool. His lesbian sister shoots the girl, and the boy incestuously attacks his mother. When the mother threatens to leave, the father begs for her to stay and continue the hollow charade of their marriage for the sake of social appearances. The father grovels before his mistress after his daughter slashes her wrists. Any comparison between this dysfunctional family, the Manson family, and Shelley Winters' sick Barker brood in Bloody Mama is all an unfortunate artistic coincidence.

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.

An anguished university student in his early 30's ponders the state of his life in light of his relationships with a politicized classmate, a TV actress selling the image of a femme fatale and his bourgeois sister.

Originally produced for German TV, Improvised and Purposeful is a firsthand look at the "Cinema Novo" movement (otherwise known as the 'Brazilian New Wave'). Director Joaquim Pedro de Andrade focuses on six Cinema Novo filmmakers working in Rio in 1967.

Documentary about Maria Bethânia, at the very beginning of her career as a singer, when she arrived in Rio da Bahia to replace Nara Leão in the show Opinião. Bethânia's appearance, at that time in southern Rio, was a cultural shock that shook the city. The film also contains scenes of her daily life and meetings with other musicians.

After being orphaned, a boy is raised by his grandfather and uncles, rich rural landowners, on a sugarcane plantation where he grows up, studies, learns about politics, love and disillusionment.

In search of a better life, Luzia leaves the Northeast of Brazil and goes to Rio de Janeiro, looking for her fiance who went first to pave their way. Alone in the Marvelous City, she is forced to accept the friendship and protection of Calunga and, later, the company of Inácio.