ALVORADA - BRAZIL'S CHANGING FACE

ALVORADO - AUFBRUCH IN BRASILIEN

Director Hugo Niebeling / 1962 / West Germany

A subjective impression of the vigorous growth and tremendous potentialities of a Brazil, rich in tradition but looking to the future; a film that does not attempt to give a reasoned, historical or geographical account, but reproduces the visual and emotional impact on a sensitive mind.

After a brief introduction we are given impressions of the land with its deep forests and mighty rivers and of the people of the land with their work-furrowed faces and their traditional ceremonies. These images keep recurring throughout to remind us of the them, binding the loosely constructed material into unity. With the camera always trained on the most telling aspects, we move from city to city, now recalling the glories of the opera house at Manaos, now exploring the won ders of Rio de Janeiro from the air, now hovering above the street canyons of Sao Paolo and experiencing vertiginous shots of its skyscrapers. We are made increasingly aware of the progress of technology with frequent cutting to industrial sites, and fimlly we rush along the great highway to the new capital, Brasilia, where all this striving and planning has reached its culmination, concluding the film with images of its lonely grandeur. With a minimum of commentary, the scriptwriter's ideas are conveyed in purely visual terms. No technique, no angle, no method of camera transport has been left unexplored. What results is an exciting and beautiful kaleidoscope of images.

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