Entranced Earth (Terra em Transe) is screening as part of the retrospective celebrating LC Barreto: 60 Years of Brazilian Film Production. The retrospective is screening at The Garden Cinema and the ICA from 25 April- 10 May, in partnership with Instituto Rouanet and the Embassy of Brazil in London.

A pivotal film from one of the key figures of Brazil’s Cinema Novo, Entranced Earth is alternately a rallying cry and a poetic account of political corruption, the systems that shape it, and the challenges of active citizenship in times of political upheaval. Made three years after the right-wing coup d’etat in Brazil, the film is set in the fictional country of El Dorado, in which a young intellectual attempts to chart a political path. First joining the extreme right, and then a party of the left, he ultimately finds dispiriting power dynamics in each. Shot by Luiz Carlos Barreto and unfolding in a mesmeric style that mixes bizarre, baroque imagery with realist formal maneuvers—something like the synthesis of Francesco Rosi, Buñuel, and Visconti—the film is a monumental work of political cinema that pushes its audience to examine its own role in civil society.

Cast:
Jardel Filho, Paulo Autran, José Lewgoy, Glauce Rocha, Paulo Gracindo