Lecture & Film

The Empty Boat: Meteorango Kid and Brazilian Cinema Marginal

Meteorango Kid — O Herói Intergalático

Christopher Dunn

Dec. 21, 2017 20:15 h

André Luiz Oliveira’s Meteorango Kid – O herói intergalático (1969) is an important, yet often overlooked, contribution to Cinema Marginal, the low-budget cinematic productions that rejected the high art pretensions and revolutionary politics of Cinema Novo and captured the sense of disillusionment and impotence among middle class youth during the most repressive phase of authoritarian rule in Brazil. Playful and dreamlike in some of its sequences, Meteorango Kid also takes nightmarish turns in its exploration of revolt and alienation among university students in Salvador, the capital city of Bahia, a mecca for the Brazilian hippies in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Meteorango Kid captures both the exuberant joy and the profound despair among Brazilian youth living in a conservative, repressive society that was hostile to the cultural and social transformations of the age.