Carlos Diegues on ‘Bye Bye Brazil’
Bye Bye Brazil is a film about one country in decline and another that is taking its place. I cannot specify exactly what is ending and what is beginning, all I can do is record the extraordinary period of transition, through the stories of four characters searching for their places in this new country, just as any of us would. Life in Brazil today is sometimes born in strange circumstances: in the co-existence of the archaic and the modern, for example, or of the jungle and pollution, of ox-carts and aeroplanes, of misery and abundance, of beauty and pain. It is stimulating to know that we live in a country that can still shape its own destiny, starting from its own ‘madness’. This has nothing to do with nationalism, nor with easy optimism… it’s just a matter of having hope.
Bye Bye Brazil was made by a group of people who understood what they were doing and did it with great passion. We travelled 15,000 kilometres across the interior of the country. We crossed three of its five regions, moving by car, plane, truck, boat and bus. In the Amazon basin we fell victim to torrential rain, which destroyed roads and delayed filming. In the north-eastern sertão, along with the local inhabitants, we suffered the consequences of the drought that had lasted for two years, working under the burning sun in temperatures exceeding 40 degrees centigrade. These experiences, together with the meaning of the film itself, cemented deep friendships between us, and made each new member of the team an author of the finished film.
The film represents a crossing of the ‘ocean’ of Brazil’s interior, just as other navigators crossed seas in earlier centuries. The magic of the cinema enables us to capture the trance-struck country without resorting to rhetoric. Just like the ancient navigator-writers, we saw mermaids, sea serpents and lost worlds beyond the ocean. We must bid farewell to an idyllic Brazil that no longer exists, and must stop looking at it through the eyes of the 19th century romantic intellectual. We must start believing in the possibility of a new tropical civilisation, and live the adventure of this dream. Then we can move into the 21st century without prejudice.
The music of ‘Bye Bye Brazil’
The musical portion of Bye Bye Brazil involves three aspects: the first corresponds to the use of the local music, recorded live during the shooting of the scene. This is the case of the singing of the Indians around the fire, on the banks of the Rio Xingu. It concerns a ritual chant of the Cruaris (Indian Tribe) performed during the farewell ceremonies. In the scenes taking place in the Northeast ‘pifanos’ (little wooden flutes) interpret some religious and secular scenes, recorded during the sequences of the fair of Piranhas, and during the procession and nocturnal prayers at Entremontes. These pieces had been performed by a local group, the best of the region.
The second aspect of the musical soundtrack of Bye Bye Brazil, is found in the use of pieces already recorded and selected by Carlos Diegues, for their local expression and their dramatical adaptation suited to the filmed scenes. This is the case, for example, of the extraordinary use of the ‘Pastoril do Faceta’, illustrating the morning when Lord Cigano decides to depart for the sertão. It concerns a sort of eroticisation or vulgarisation of popular naive songs belonging to the Christmas season.
The final aspect, the most delicate, consists of the music especially written for the film. Its direction is by Roberto Menescal, maestro and renowned composer, one of the pioneers of the Bossa Nova of the 1960s. He wrote the theme, on which Chico Buarque composed the words heard at the beginning and the end of the film. Buarque’s authentic poem reenacts in 65 verses a telephone conversation of someone who crosses Brazil.
The other theme of the film is written especially by Dominguinhos, who is today in Brazil (a country with such numerous and varied musical forms) the most famous performer of the forro of the Northeast (a sort of song which accompanies round dances and farandoles in rural festivals). Each time this theme appears, Dominguinhos performs it himself on the accordion.
Production notes
Carlos Diegues was born in Maceio, Brazil in 1940 and began his film career in 1962 with Cinco vezez favela, a film about poverty. He became one of the chief theoreticians of the Cinema Novo movement, and made several other short films. But it was his first full-length feature film, Xica da Silva (1976) that brought him international success. Bye Bye Brazil (1979), Quilombo (1984) and Um trem para as estrelas (1986) brought him further renown. He is also a poet, journalist and film critic.
Like most of his contemporaries, Carlos Diegues is trying to discover, through the medium of film, a real Brazil in which the modern co-exists with the archaic, misery with abundance, tragedy with beauty, past with future. Within the present soulless and geographical decay of the late twentieth century, Diegues’ characters are searching for the euphoria of change in a world currently out of control. Material progress has destroyed the rain forest and the culture of the Amazon Indians. Diegues is searching for a return to lost values.
Ronald Schwarz, Latin American Films, 1932-1994: A Critical Filmography (McFarland & Co, 1997)
Bye Bye Brazil Bye Bye Brasil
Director: Carlos Diegues
Production Companies: Aries Cinematográfica, Société Nouvelle des Etablissements Gaumont
Executive Producer: Lucy Barreto
Producer: Luiz Carlos Barreto
Associate Producers: Walter Clark, Bruno Barreto, Carlos Henrique Braga, Luciola Villela
Production Manager: Otávio Miranda
Production Co-ordinator: Marcos Altberg
Location Assistant (Altamira): José Mola
Location Assistant (Belem): Januário Guede
Location Assistant (Maceio): Celso Brandão
Location Assistant (Brasilia): Marcia Marilia
Production Assistants: Antonio Claudio, Alvaro Magaldi, Maria da Salete
Production Secretary: Theodoro Andersen
Assistant Director: Fábio Barreto
2nd Assistant Director: Bruno Wainer
Continuity: Nieves Cabello
Screenplay and Original Story: Carlos Diegues
Script Collaborator: Leopoldo Serran
Director of Photography: Lauro Escorel Filho
Assistant Camera: José Tadeu Ribeiro
Chief Electrician: Jadeyr Guimarães
Electricians: Pedro Cavalcanti, José Luiz
Key Grip: Lourenço Cesar
Stills Photography: Ademir Silva
Editor: Mair Tavares
Assistant Editor: Denise Fontoura
Sets and Costumes: Anisio Medeiros
Assistant Sets and Costumes: Paulo Chada
Wardrobe Mistress: Maria da Guia
Make-up: Antonio Pacheco
Titles: Fernando Pimenta
Musical Themes: Chico Buarque, Roberto Menescal, Dominguinhos
Music Director: Roberto Menescal
Choreography: Carlos Machado
Sound: Jean-Claude Lauredux, Victor Raposeiro
Additional Dubbing: Roberto Mello
Sound Editor: Emmanuelle Castro
Sound Effects: Walter Goulart, Antonio Cesar
Cast
Betty Faria (Salomé)
José Wilker (Lord Cigano)
Fabio Junior (Ciço)
Zaira Zambelli (Dasdó)
Principe Nabor (Andorinha)
Emmanuel Cavalcanti (mayor)
José Marcio Passos (mayor’s assessor)
Carlos Kroeber (truck driver)
Jofre Soares (Zé da Luz)
Rodolfo Arena (peasant)
Catalina Bonaki (widow)
Rinaldo Gines (Indian chief)
Marcos Vinicius (agent)
José Maria Lima (assistant)
Oscar Reis (smuggler)
Cleodon Gondin (customer)
José Carlos Lacerda (steward)
Marieta Severo (social worker)
Brazil-France 1979
100 mins
Digital 4K
The screening on Sat 23 May will be introduced by Dr Antonio da Silva, University of Essex
Presented as part of the UK/Brazil Season of Culture 2025-26 and supported by Instituto Guimarães Rosa
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Programme notes and credits compiled by Sight and Sound and the BFI Documentation Unit
Notes may be edited or abridged
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