Iracema

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

35mm print “Iracema (an anagram for America) is a 14-year-old Indian girl who leaves her Amazon village to find out what life is like in the big city of Belem. There she survives by prostitution until she meets a truck driver on the Trans-Amazon Highway route who takes her on the road.

The highway symbolizes the ‘new’ Brazil of fantastic wealth and mobility, but for Iracema the journey leads straight back to the same life of resignation. Her abuse and humiliation mirror the ruthless destruction of the Brazilian landscape, the beauty and squalor of which is captured in Jorge Bodanzky’s color camerawork. With riveting performances by the two leads, Bodanzky’s semidocumentary approach to fiction ran counter to the dialectic/operatic approach of Glauber Rocha and the main Cinema Nôvo directors, but was no less revolutionary. Iracema shows the Brazil of the developing outback in images so graphic that the film was banned from release.” – Pacific Film Archive

• Country Brazil/West Germany/France
• Language In Portuguese with English subtitles
• Rating NR
• Year 1975
• Running Time 91 minutes
• Director Jorge Bodanzky & Orlando Senna

IFC Center does not generally provide advisories about subject matter or potentially triggering content in films, as sensitivities vary from person to person. In addition to the synopses, trailers and other links on our website, further information about content and age-appropriateness for specific films can be found on Common Sense Media, IMDb and DoesTheDogDie.com as well as through general internet searches.