Macunaíma

An anarchic 60s comedy that mixes ancient myths, racial burlesque, and urban guerillas into a hallucinatory experience.

One of the high points of Brazil's subversive Cinema Novo movement, Joaquim Pedro de Andrade's Macunaíma (1969) is an anarchic comedy that mixes ancient myths, racial burlesque, and urban guerillas into a hallucinatory masterpiece. Adapted from the classic 1928 modernist novel by Mário de Andrade, the film follows Macunaíma, the "hero with no character," after he emerges as a full-size adult from his elderly mother's belly. Born black, he magically turns white as he wanders aimlessly across the country, tricking his way through traps laid out by witches, giants and man-eating industrialists, while also falling in love with a beautiful revolutionary. Thumbing its nose at the military dictatorship then reigning in Brazil, Macunaíma is a surreal and politically combustible comedy at the cutting edge of the Tropicalist avant-garde.