Metrograph

A towering pillar of the Tropicalist movement within Cinema Novo, based on (no relation to director Joaquim Pedro) Mário de Andrade’s foundational 1928 text of Brazilian literary modernism, introduced as “the story of a Brazilian devoured by Brazil,” the rhapsodic, folklore-steeped Macunaima follows its shape-shifting hero—who transforms from white to black and back again—from the Amazon jungle to the streets of São Paulo, where he mixes with urban street fighters, rapacious industrialists, and water spirits, among other improbable happenings. “The first Cinema Novo film to be formally innovative, politically radical, and immensely popular with the Brazilian masses… fuses symbols, satire, and free fantasy and melds the real and the fantastic into a unified fictional universe.” —Randal Johnson, Brazilian Cinema