SUBJECTS

Aged -- Sexual behavior, Andrade, Carlos Drummond de, 1902-1987, Brazil -- Social life and customs, Reminiscing in old age, Sex -- Brazil

O Amor Natural

  • In Conversation

    Katrina Dodson is the translator of The Complete Stories by Clarice Lispector.

  • Idra Novey is a novelist, poet, and translator. Her debut novel, Ways to Disappear, is about a translator's search for a missing Brazilian author.

  • Author and Berkeley professor Ramona Naddaff is cofounder and editor of Zone Books. 

  • In Person

    Local screenwriter

  • In Person

    Local filmmaker

A charming film in which the impish Honigmann asks an array of Brazilians to recite erotic poetry by Carlos Drummond de Andrade (1902–1987), the illustrious polymath—pharmacist, civil servant, journalist, editor, literary critic, and last but not least, poet—from Itabira. In the film, the exquisitely sensuous poems, sparkling with onomatopoeic wordplay and idiosyncratic syntax—and beautifully subtitled here for the non–Portuguese-speaking viewer—act as a window onto the fantastic topography of Brazilian sexuality. After the ad hoc recitals, Honigmann asks questions only an outsider could possibly get away with, to incite her mostly elderly subjects to explore their own memories and fantasies of sexual love. As one widowed samba singer sums things up, Drummond's poems allow you to “feel in your soul what perfect sex is.” Turning to the camera as if it were a magical reincarnation of the great poet himself, she says of her deceased husband, “I killed him with all my fucking, I think.”

Ilisa Barbash
Lucien Taylor
FILM DETAILS 
Screenwriter
  • Heddy Honigmann
Cinematographer
  • José Guerra
Language
  • Portuguese
  • with English subtitles
Print Info
  • Color
  • 35mm
  • 76 mins
Source
  • Icarus Films
CINEFILES

CineFiles is an online database of BAMPFA's extensive collection of documentation covering world cinema, past and present.

View O amor natural documents  

The films of Heddy Honigmann (program note), Cinematheque Ontario/a division of Toronto International Film Festival Group, George Kaltsounakis, 2003

The heart of the matter: Heddy Honigman (flyer), Pacific Film Archive, 2003

Heddy Honigmann (program note), Northwest Film Center, 2002

O amor natural (postcard), First Run Features, 1998

O amor natural (program note), Vancouver International Film Festival, Toni Hanna, 1997

O amor natural (program note), San Francisco International Film Festival, Toni Hanna, 1997

O amor natural (review), Variety, David Rooney, 1997

O amor natural (program note), Recontres '97, 1997

O amor natural (program note), Film Forum (New York), 1997

O amor natural (review), Dox, Ulla Jacobsen, 1997

Displaying 10 of 15 publicly available documents.


View all O amor natural documentation on CineFiles.

Preceded By

New Mo Cut: David Peoples' Lost Film of Moe's Books

Siciliana Trevino, ,

FILM DETAILS 
Print Info
  • Color
  • 35mm
  • 14 mins