On Cinema

Description

By (author) Rocha Glauber; Edited by Xavier Ismail; Translated by Smith, Charlotte; Translated by Dennison Stephanie; Translated by Mello, Cecília; Associate editor Nagib, Lúcia

Glauber Rocha is known as the visionary Brazilian director of landmark films, Black God, White Devil, Entranced Earth and Antonio das Mortes. Hitherto virtually unknown outside Brazil is that he was also a brilliant film critic and innovative thinker on world cinema. On Cinema brings together for the first time in the English language a comprehensive selection of Rocha”s film writings, revealing for the first time to English-speaking readers the full critical power, inventiveness and vision of a great filmmaker. Rocha”s writings, endowed with critical verve and humour, give insights into key moments of film history, as well as the politics of world cinema. Here he fearlessly confronts the film establishment and debates with a host of sacred filmmakers of the world pantheon. Included is Rocha”s early criticism of Brazilian films, landmark manifestoes such as ”An Aesthetics of Hunger” and ”An Aesthetics of Dreams”, articles about the development of Cinema Novo, and his international film criticism, including pieces on Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles, James Dean, David Lean, John Huston, Stanley Kubrick, John Ford, Jean-Luc Godard, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Federico Fellini, Luis Bunuel, Luchino Visconti and Roberto Rossellini. The publication of On Cinema, edited by film scholar Ismail Xavier and in expert translation, is an international publishing event.

Review quote
To read On Cinema is to cling to an intellectual bucking bronco, to follow the coursing convolutions of a racing mind. You may emerge bruised from the experience but, if you manage to catch on to Rocha”s crashing, juddering cadence, it”s a hell of a ride.

Review quote
This essential volume happily doubles as a delirious memoir of the golden era of arthouse film distribution (with Rocha simultaneously praising and disputing the work of his contemporaries), but it also bombards the reader with breathtaking manifestos from one page to the next.

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You might say that On Cinema, a compilation of the Brazilian filmmaker Glauber Rocha’s writings, is cinema … Rocha reveals himself to be the ‘60s cineaste par excellence.

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Invaluable … A rich assembly of articles drawn from three separate collections of Rocha’s writing … An essential guide.

Biographical note

Glauber Rocha (1939-1981) is Brazil’s most important filmmaker and founder of the 1960s and ‘70s Cinema Novo movement. His films are landmarks of Brazilian and world film history. He was also a prolific writer and film critic, whose critical thought made a decisive contribution to the notion of Third Cinema.
Ismail Xavier is Professor of Film at the University of São Paulo, Brazil. His book Allegories of Underdevelopment: Aesthetics and Politics in Modern Brazilian Cinema (1997) marks a milestone in Brazilian cinema studies.Editorial co-ordination by Lúcia Nagib, University of Reading, UK. Translation by Cecília Mello, Stephanie Dennison and Charlotte Smith

for collection
The World Cinema series aims to reveal and celebrate the richness and complexity of film art across the globe, exploring a wide variety of cinemas set within their own cultures and as they interconnect in a global context. Books in the series represent innovative scholarship, in tune with the multicultural character of contemporary audiences. Drawing upon an international authorship, they challenge outdated conceptions of world cinema, and provide new ways of understanding a field at the centre of film studies in an era of transnational networks.Series EditorsProfessor Lúcia Nagib, University of Reading: [email protected] Julian Ross, Leiden Universit