The Age of the Earth

Glauber Rocha's last film is not a narrative but a shout. Four separate Christ figures, standing for different peoples of Brazil, set themselves against an American industrialist named John Brahms. The camera swings continuously, voices overlap, actors shout straight into the lens, and the locations jump from Brasília to Salvador. Rocha said the film began from his thinking about the murder of Pasolini. Its screening at Venice in 1980 produced a serious row, with a large part of the international press rejecting it, and Rocha took that as a personal attack. He died a year later. It now stands as one of the outer limits of the Third Cinema argument. Who it is for: viewers curious about political avant-garde and Brazilian cinema after Cinema Novo. Who it is not for: anyone wanting a followable structure, which the film deliberately refuses.