See this film retrospective: "Nelson Pereira dos Santos, Cinema Novo and Beyond" @ the HFA
Barren Lives (Vidas Secas)
Brazilian cinema owes much of its vitality, relevance,
and international stature to the director celebrated in the Harvard Film
Archive retrospective, "Nelson Pereira
dos Santos, Cinema Novo and Beyond," which runs through May 7. For over
half a century dos Santos has made vivid neorealistic films that are
politically committed and quintessentially Brazilian. The series opens on Friday, April 20 with one
of his best, the aptly titled Barren
Lives (1968; 7 pm), in which a destitute family struggles to survive in the
desert. Also screening is his outlandish, rarely seen sci-fi farce Who Is Beta? (1972; 9 pm ), which is
kind of like a Vittorio De Sica zombie movie. The Archive is in the Carpenter
Center, 24 Quincy St, Cambridge | $9; $7 students, seniors | 617.495.4700 or hcl.harvard.edu/hfa.