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Biography
| 1968 | In January, the script of
Earth Entranced is published by the French magazine L'Avant-Scéne du Cinema
and by the German magazine Film. In February, Rocha gets from the government authorities of Bahia the required facilities for the shooting of his next film. Jean-Luc Godard invites Rocha to act in his film Vent d'Est. The character he plays is Glauber Rocha himself: a young film maker who points out the true path towards the revolutionary politic cinema. During four days of July, in Rio, Rocha shoots the 16mm long-length film Cancer. He shoots the long-length motion picture Antonio das Mortes in a small village in Bahia called Milagres. He takes part in a seminar about cinema and television in Latin America, organized by UNESCO, at the University of São Paulo. Roberto Rossellini, Edgard Morin and Alfredo Guevara also participate. Rocha co-produces Brasil Ano 2000, a long-length film by Walter Lima Jr, stared by his sister Anecy Rocha. |
| 1969 | Antonio das Mortes is shown at the Cannes
Festival. Glauber shares the Best Director Award with the Czechoslovakian
Vobtech Jasny (for Moravia Chronicle). Besides this award, Antonio das
Mortes wins in Cannes the FIPRESCI Award, the Luis Buñuel Award and the
Award of the International Confederation of the Art and Essay Cinema.
The European reviewers praise the picture. In Belgium, the film wins the
First Prize of the Cinema Festival of Plovaine. In Brazil, it wins the
Golden Owl Trophy and the Special Award for Quality from the National
Institute of Cinema. In Cannes, before the result of the competition, Rocha receives a call from Pedro Fages, Spanish producer, offering him a hundred thousand dollars to make a film in Spain about any theme and with total freedom to create. In July, in Paris, the French producer Claude Antoine invites Rocha to make a film. In September, he goes to Africa to choose the locations. "My eyes were dashed by this African magazine: Brazzaville. A group of young nationalist officers had struck a coup d'état and installed an anti-colonialist regimen with still rather vague socialist tendencies. I read their institutional act and there was an article that turned me on: Artistic censorship is abolished in this new regimen." Der Leone Have Sept Cabeças is shot in 22 days. |
| 1970 | In February and March, Rocha shoots in
Cataluña, Spain, the long-length motion picture Cabezas
Cortadas (Severed Heads). After a short stay in New York for the premiere of Antonio das Mortes, Rocha goes back to Spain, where he finishes the editing of his new film. In July, at the International Cinema Festival of San Sebastian, in Spain, Cabezas Cortadas is shown for the first time. Rocha is at the time in Chile, where he had gone to prepare a new project. In August, Der Leone Has Sept Cabeças is screened at the International Cinema Exhibition of Venice, causing a lot of controversy among the public and extremely uneven comments by the reviewers, such as "an irrational film that leans on the boundaries of guessing, in an obscure mixture of inert metaphors" and "a lesson of political cinema". Glauber Rocha comes back to Brazil, but the increasing repression and the arrest of Walter Lima Junior make him give up his projects of film making in the country. In November, Rocha starts to write to the Brazilian weekly Pasquim. |