In fact, the sertão’s history is entwined with struggles such as the War of Canudos that was a conflict between Brazilian army and the social movements led by the messianic Antônio Conselheiro. Such stories were very important to the making of several films such as Glauber Rocha’s films Black God, White Devil (1964) and Antônio das Mortes (1969); or the cangaço, the social-banditry, incarnated in the figure of Virgulino Ferreira da Silva, most known as Lampião, “the king of the cangaço”.

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Lampião’s figure is also recurrent in many of the films made between the 1950s and 1980s that have the sertão as their setting. In addition to the two films already mentioned, Lampião appears in films like Lampião, The King of the Backlands directed by Carlos Coimbra (1964), Coriço & Dadá by Rosemberg Cariry (1996), Perfumed Ball by Lírio Ferreira and Paulo Caldas (1997), etc.

 

Perhaps, the most important “chronicler” of the sertão’s late colonial and first republican period is Euclides da Cunha. His Rebellion in The Backlands (Os Sertões - 1902) is one of the most influential and well-known pieces of Brazilian literature and it mixes science and fiction to describe the land, the man (people), and sertão’s people’s fight. In it, one can find the ten real and now mythic elements that constitute the identity of the backlands: the sertanejo (the man of the backland), the jagunço (the farmer’s “bodyguard”), the cangaceiro (the social-bandit), the messianic leader, the pilgrims etc.; Even the droughts, the hunger, and the caatinga (the dry-like vegetation) contribute for the creation of such mythic space.

 

The sertão until recently has always been seen as synonymous with being backwards due to the reason that most Brazilian big cities have always been located near the coast, a fact that can be explained by Brazil’s colonial past. Production was always been run off to the seaboard to be exported to the European metropolis. Thus the backlands have been associated with the opposite of the modern city, that is to say, as a pre-modern place that could not be developed for economical, political and “natural” reasons, such as the lack of water in the periods of drought. Despite the latter, however, the sertão’s marginal position has to do in a great extent to the political will of the rulers.

 

On the other hand, the sertanejos could not dedicate themselves to the improvement of their “own” lands as wished; During those periods of drought many of them had to migrate, like the birds that appear in Nelson Pereira’s Barren Lives, to the Southeasten cities and help their families to survive. Huge metropolises like São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro have been constructed with the working force of many Northeasterns, and the favelas too as one can see in João Batista de Andrade’s O Homem que Virou Suco (lit. The Man Turned into Juice - 1981).

 

New Brazilian cinema has changed its way of representing the sertão from the 1960’s Cinema Novo movement’s denunciation of the mysthical and social injustices; passing through the exploitation of the symbols and mythic figures of the sertão for entretainment in the 1980s, to a more grounded and realistic sertão that aims to demystify the images and the contradictions of the backlands through more personal stories without the aim of producing any metanarrtive or national alegory. This tendency can be seen in films like Walter Salles’ Central Station (1998) - although some old myths are exploited, - Love for Sales (2006) and I Travel because I Need To, I Come Back Because I Love You (2009) both directed by Karim Ainouz, or Bog of Beast by Cláudio Assis (2007). The latter is more impressive in its localization, however, as the story reveals a backland far away of being a mythical, moralistic and conservative space.

 

No one can predict how Brazilian cinema will represent the sertão in the future, however, what is sure is that we have now very diverse and artistically engendered representations of the Brazilian Northeastern backlands.

 

Bibliography

 

Antonio Filho, F. D. “About The Word “Sertão”: Origins, Meanings And Uses In Brazil (From The Point Of View Of Geographical Science)”. [Ciência Geográfica - Bauru - XV - Vol. XV - (1): Jan/Dec – 2011]. Associação dos Geógrafos Brasileiros.  21-05-2015. http://www.agbbauru.org.br/publicacoes/revista/anoXV_1/AGB_dez2011_artigos_versao_internet/AGB_dez2011_11.pdf

 

[1] "sertão", in Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa [online], 2008-2013, http://www.priberam.pt/dlpo/sert%C3%A3o [accessed on 20-05-2015].