Iracema
The Secret Agent Network
January 7 - 13
Shot along the freshly carved Trans-Amazonian Highway in the early years of Brazil’s dictatorship, Iracema captured a country violently remaking itself through state-backed “development” and the accelerating destruction of the Amazon.
Shot along the freshly carved Trans-Amazonian Highway in the early years of Brazil’s dictatorship—a showcase project sold as national destiny—Iracema captured a country violently remaking itself through state-backed “development” and the accelerating destruction of the Amazon, including some of the earliest filmed images of the forest burning. An Indigenous teenager drifts into Belém do Pará, scraping by as a sex worker, and falls in with Tião Brasil Grande, a swaggering trucker who parrots the regime’s optimism while hauling contraband hardwood through a forest disappearing in real time. Their uneasy bond becomes a road movie through a ravaged landscape, where “progress” reveals itself as displacement. With unsparing clarity, Jorge Bodanzky and Orlando Senna expose the extractive logic driving the dictatorship’s grand projects, which led to the film’s banning by the military government.
Restoration production and technical coordination by Alice de Andrade; produced by Montanha Russa Cinematográfica; Artistic Director Jorge Bodanzky; image restoration by Cinegrell; sound restoration by José Luiz Sasso, JLS Studios; restoration supervisors Débora Butruce and Martin Köerber; with support from CTAV, Mnemosine, IMS, PUC-Rio, Instituto Guimarães Rosa, and Cinemateca Brasileira.
"It's a very powerful film about the Amazon. It's actually the first time that you see the Amazon forest burning in a film that became quite well known. It premiered at Critics' Week in Cannes in 1975, and it was banned by the military government in the late '70s. It's a very powerful film about a trucker who comes from the south of Brazil... It's a timeless film—quite tough... I believe that some of the rough style [influenced The Secret Agent] because one concern of mine was never to do a film set in the '70s which would be clean and tidy and too contemporary looking—it had to look rough around the edges."
—Kleber Mendonça Filho
Read More
Lucrecia Martel on Our Land (Nuestra Tierra), the Filmmaker’s First Feature Documentary
On the latest episode of FLC Luminaries, our video series that spotlights talent at all levels of the filmmaking process who uplift the art and craft of cinema, Our Land (Nuestra Tierra) director Lucrecia Martel discusses her expansive and enlightening first feature documentary.
Carla Simón on Her Poignantly Autobiographical Romería
This week we’re excited to present a conversation from the 63rd New York Film Festival with Romería director Carla Simón, moderated by NYFF Main Slate selection committee member Florence Almozini.
FLC and NYAFF Announce Lineup and Awards of the 25th New York Asian Film Festival, July 10–26
The New York Asian Film Festival (NYAFF) and Film at Lincoln Center today unveil the second wave of programming for its landmark 25th edition, adding more than 40 films to an already wide-ranging lineup, with very special final titles still to come.
