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Magnificent Desolation

In the mid-1990s, the Brazilian government handed over control of its railroads to the private sector. There was then a reduction of passenger train lines to almost zero and shrinkage of the rail freight network. The machinists, who once traveled with an assistant, began to work completely on their own in their long journeys. The film presents a subjective view on the daily life of these professionals and their solitary routine in the midst of a grandiose, tedious, desolate and at the same time passionate universe.

Magnificent Desolation

NR 2010
The Third Bank of the River

After an extended period directing original screenplays, dos Santos returned to the creative engagement with literature that was the wellspring of his early masterpieces, offering a combinatory adaptation of five stories by the renowned Brazilian novelist João Guimarães Rosa. Openly embracing a mode of magical realism, dos Santos' celebrated film tells the story of a farming family defined by the absence of its father who abruptly abandoned his wife and children, sailing away down the river, including his son who continues to communicate with his father, speaking daily to him from the river bank. While offering an evocative vision of rural Brazil as a timeless land of mystery and solemnity, The Third Bank of the River is also bitingly satiric in the remarkable depiction of religious belief when the family moves to the city and its youngest member, a mesmerizing little girl, is revealed to be a kind of saint, capable of miraculous acts. -Harvard Film Archive

The Third Bank of the River

6.2 1994