Os Inconfidentes DVDrip

Os Inconfidentes (1972)
Joaquim Pedro de Andrade


http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068739/




Plot Synopsis from NYFF Program
In 1972, Brazil was in the darkest days of the military dictatorship that had seized power eight years before. Working for Italian television, de Andrade embarked on a re-creation of the Inconfidencia Mineira, the Mineiran Conspiracy, fledgling groups of rebels based in Minas Gerais in the late 18th century who questioned Portuguese colonial authority. The film alternates between scenes of clandestine meetings and later interrogations and even torture a pointed reference to what was happening in Brazil at the time. At the center of these events is Tiradentes (beautifully played by Jose Wilker), a lower class rebel whose defiance of the authorities at his trial would make him a national symbol. Yet the suffering of Tiradentes allows the better-connected upper-class members of the conspiracy to go largely unpunished, another aspect of the story with uncomfortable relevance in the 70s. The Conspirators is living history in the most exciting sense of the term, a look at the past that clearly becomes a mirror for the present.

Excerpt from "CANNIBAL AESTHETICS: The zigzagging career of Brazil’s Joaquim Pedro de Andrade " by Olaf Möllerfrom Film Comment
In November 1965, during the final stages of work on The Priest and the Girl, de Andrade and seven other filmmakers and artists, including Glauber Rocha, were jailed after organizing a protest against the military regime that had seized power the previous year. That experience doubtless informed The Conspirators, de Andrade’s ambitious bid to set certain colonial records straight. In 1789 a group of ¬liberal-minded poets, judges, soldiers, and priests in Minas Gerais staged an unsuccessful coup d’état that resulted in the execution of a lieutenant by the name of Joaquim José da Silva Xavier. Popularly known as Tiradentes, he was the only conspirator who refused to throw himself on the mercy of the Portuguese crown, and because of his supreme sacrifice he became a national hero. A tract constructed from discussions, confessions, and several accidental poems, it’s shot in long, often wide-angle takes, with shimmering light and subdued color. Aside from a few Brechtian interludes, it’s dourly realistic for the most part—an Anthropophagic Tropicalist’s idea of an actuality drama, the B-side of the samba that plays at the end of Garrincha, Joy of the People.