SELVA TRÁGICA
A film by Roberto Farias
(Brazil, 1963, 104 min. In Portuguese with English subtitles)

Selva Trágica tells the story of Pablito, a young herbalist played by Reginaldo Faria who revolts against the rules of "the company", a yerba mate company that owns a huge government granted land territory in Mato Grosso, Brazil. Pablito and his so-called "changa-y" herbalist friends, who make their living by stealing yerba mate crops and selling them to third-party vendors, are ambushed by the company's henchmen and captured. Quickly, they are forced to slave-labor to pay for what they had "stolen" from the area. While working for the company, Pablito falls in love with Flora, a similarly captured woman who resists falling into the role of a prostitute for the company's workers. Together, Pablito, Flora, and their friend Pytã attempt to escape the company's cruel labor conditions by running over the border to Paraguay.

Adapted from a 1959 novel of the same name by Hernâni Donato, Roberto Farias's Selva Trágica is one of the major films from the Brazilian Cinema Novo period. Alongside other Cinema Novo films such as Vidas Secas (1963) and A Hora e a Vez de Augusto Matraga (1965), Selva Trágica explores themes of social injustice within Brazil's rural areas. As the camera turns towards plantation workers on a Yerba Mate farm in Mato Grosso, Farias's Selva Trágica sheds light on lives previously unrepresented in Brazilian Cinema.

Receiving its U.S. premiere in a new digital copy, Selva Trágica is a long-overlooked work from one of the most daring and experimental decades of Brazilian cinema.

Saturday, February 8, 2:10pm
Lenfest Center for the Arts at Columbia University
Manhattanville Campus
615 West 129th Street, New York City
"Part of: Zoom-In 2020: Screening Series and Thesis Showcase"

Free admission
RSVP at https://lenfest.arts.columbia.edu/events/zoom-2020