Film of the Week: O AMOR NATURAL

O AMOR NATURAL
A film by Heddy Honigmann
(Netherlands, 1996, 76 min. In Portuguese with English subtitles)

O Amor Natural is a documentary film about the erotic poetry of one of the greatest Latin American poets of the 20th century, the Brazilian Carlos Drummond de Andrade (1902-1987), a household name in Brazil. His erotic poems remained unpublished during his lifetime, as he feared they would be deemed pornographic. In this celebration of his poetry and sensual vision, elderly residents of Rio read his poems and comment on their graphic, voluptuous imagery with tremendous candor and enthusiasm. "We're old. We're not dead!" interjects one reader, as memories of stolen pleasures and bittersweet melancholy unfold. Says filmmaker Heddy Honigmann: "The poems sometimes functioned as a kind of corkscrew, sometimes as a glass of water, sometimes as a glass of brandy."

Now streaming on Ovid.tv