Filmography
CREDITS
Non-fiction, short-length, 35mm, color, 480 meters, 18 minutes. Rio de Janeiro, 1977. Production: Embrafilme; Distribution: Embrafilme; 1st screening: 11 March 1977, Cinemateca do MAM, Rio de Janeiro; Release: 11 June 1979, Rio de Janeiro. Production Director: Ricardo Moreira; Director: Glauber Rocha; Assistant Director: Ricardo [Pudim] Moreira; Cinematographers: Mário Carneiro, Nonato Estrela; Editor: Roberto Pires; Music: Pixinguinha (Lamento), Villa-Lobos (Floresta do Amazonas), Paulinho da Viola, Lamartine Babo (O Teu Cabelo Não Nega), Jorge Ben; Locations: Museu de Arte Moderna, Cemitério São João Batista (Rio de Janeiro); Awards: Prêmio Especial do Juri - Festival de Cannes/1977; Other Titles: Ninguém assistiu ao formidável enterro de sua última quimera; somente a ingratidão, essa pantera, foi sua companheira inseparável; e Di-Glauber Narrator: Glauber Rocha; Texts: Vinícius de Morais (Balada do Di Cavalcanti), Augusto dos Anjos (excerpt from Versos íntimos), Frederico de Moraes (excerpt from an article about Di Cavalcanti), Edison Brenner (radio annoucement of Di's death); Cast: Joel Barcelos, Marina Montini, Antonio Pitanga.
PREVIEW
"The death is a festive theme for the Mexicans,
and any essentialist protestant like myself does not consider it to be a tragedy.
In Earth Entranced, the poet Paulo Martins recites that we live toghether with
death... etc..., inside it, the flesh devours itself - and the cangaceiro Corisco,
in Black God White Devil, dies prophesying the resurrection of the sertão
at the sea that turns into sertão that turns into sea... Di (Das) Mortes, Glauber Rocha, mimeographed
text distributed before the session of the film on 17 March 77 at the cinema
of the Modern Art Museum of Rio de Janeiro.
Have I killed many characters? They died on themselves, engendered and sacrificed
by their own contradictions: each dialetic massacre that I stage and edit defines
itself at the filmic synthesis, and, out of the expurgation, vital metaphors remain.
The fire weapons, knives and spears are the mortal objects used by my characters,
but Queen Soledad symbolically drinks poison at the end of Cabeças Cortadas and
in Der Leone Has Sept Cabeças mercenaries are hanged. In Cancer, Antonio Pitanga
strangles Hugo Carvana, and Carvana commits suicide in Earth Entranced. In Claro,
a cannon was used to kill a mercenary in Vietnam and two characters drown in Barravento,
besides the incalculable crowds massacred by Sebastião, Corisco, Diaz, etc...
Filming my friend Di dead is an act of modernist-surrealist humour that is permitted
amid renascent artists: Phoenix/Di never died. In this case, the film is a celebration
that releases the dead from his hypocritical and tragic condition. The Feast,
the Quarup - the resurrection that transcends the bureaucracy of the cemetery.
Why bury the people with tears and commercial flowers? My film, of which title,
given by Alex Viani, is Di-Glauber, exposes two phases of the ritual: the wake
in the Museum of Modern Art and the burying at São João Batista Cemetery. This
is how we bury our deads.
Shocked by the sadness of an act that should be festive in every case (and above
all in the case of a popular genius like Emiliano Di Cavalcanti), I projected
the Alternative Ritual; My Poetic Funeral, as Di would like it, lui... the symbol
of Life...
On the metaphorical transpsychoanalitic field, I materialize the victory of Saint
George over the Dragon. And, in the case of an independent production, given the
lack of time and money and the urge of the work, I myself interpreted Saint George
(unfolded in Joel Barcelos and Antonio Pitanga) and Di-The Dragon. But curiously
I Am Black Orpheus (Pitanga) and Marina Montini (Di's muse) - Euridice in a double
way - is the Death. My flashbacks are my mirror and the mirror occupies the second
half of the film, inspired in Reflexos do Baile by Antonio Callado, and Mayra
by Darci Ribeiro.
Celebrating Di, I retrieve his corpse, and the film, which is not didatic, contributes
to perpetuating the message of the Great Painter and of the Great Medicine Man
Tupan Ará, Babaraúna Ponta-de-Lança, Glory of the Brazilian Race! The poetic
discovery of the end of the century will be the materialization of Eternity."