The New School Graduate Program in International Affairs

LAF Film Screening: Iracema - Uma Transa Amazonica

In 1974 during the height of the military dictatorship in Brazil, Jorge Bodanzky improvised a daring critique of the government's plan to open the Amazon up with new roads. Shot on the run in just two weeks, the film follows a truck driver and a local prostitute named Iracema as they traverse the Amazon. The great actor Paulo Cesar Pereio plays the lead but he's the only professional actor in the film and many of the scenes were improvised on the spot with real truck drives and locals. Barred by the dictatorship in Brazil, but critically received abroad, Iracema was the first film to capture the burning of the Amazon, the illegal extraction of exotic hardwood timber, the devastating emergence of the cattle industry, and the contemporary slavery which persists today. Recently restored and available for the first time in Brazil, Iracema is now considered one of the greatest Brazilian films ever made.

(more info to come)