Links with excerpt from video:
Link to Steven White's Article from Translation Review
Cruz e Sousa: O Poeta do Desterro (The Banished Poet) (screenplay) by Sylvio Back. Rio de Janeiro: 7 Letras, 2000.
"The poet João da Cruz e Sousa is a stigma who is quite literally hidden in Brazilian literature… Cruz e Sousa is the subject of only fragmentary biographical study. His trajectory from Nossa Senhora do Desterro (Our Banished Lady, the original name of the city of Florianópolis, Santa Catarina in southern Brazil), where he was born in 1861, to Rio de Janeiro, where he lived from 1890-1898, resembles a fogged film. There are many gaps in and spirited profiles of the poet that obscure rather than illuminate him. Even if one were to attempt to portray Cruz e Sousa in a non-ideological context by uprooting him from Africa and removing him from his native land in southern Brazil, approximating an understanding of him by means of his orphic and lunar poetry always will be a metaphor for the tragedy of being black in Brazil in any historical period. These reflections form the basis of my new film "Cruz e Sousa/The Banished Poet." In the screenplay, I attack not just the theme of Who is Cruz e Sousa? but What is Cruz e Sousa?: son of slaves, poet, theater prompter, abolitionist, journalist and functionary who earned his living as a clerk. Cruz e Sousa is the solitary lit candle on the altar where the few, faithful Symbolists "pray" poems out loud in a single voice. Cruz e Sousa is the aroused Eros ("…Carnal, let all these desires be carnal…") come to the desert-like dunes to bathe in the Lagoa da Conceição (Lake Conception) on the island of Nossa Senhora do Desterro (Our Banished Lady). Cruz e Sousa is the abolition of the slave quarters, of the tribunals, of literary guerrilla warfare, "…Slave Lords! I want to castrate you like bulls and then listen to you bellow!" Cruz e Sousa is the one who is "trapped," rejected and disqualified even by other blacks, for whom he was always "too white." Cruz e Sousa is "the black light" that fills the telluric whiteness of the screen."
From "The Black Light" by Sylvio Back
"Para quem conhece o meu cinema sabe que não costumo fazer hagiografia, incontornável praga que ultimamente vem aidetizando o cinema brasileiro tanto o de ficção como o documental. Não tenho vocação para transformar ninguém em santo, sejam eles poderosos, sejam criadores. Não traio as minhas dúvidas e incredulidade sobre o "gênero humano" (Nem a mim mismo). Com o poeta Cruz e Sousa não é diferente. Sempre arremeto para uma visão holística do personagem. São as contradições dele, sua incoerência política, ideológica, estética e étnica-que me fascinam-os aspectos tortos e na incompletude da biografia. Isso o dessacraliza, torna-o mais perto de nós e produz uma sensação onde o seu talento e inventividade assumem a dimensão da humanidade, não da mitologia . . .."
Sylvio Back, Jornal do Brasil"One of the most beautiful films made by new Brazilian cinema."
Luiz Carlos Merten, O Estado de São Paulo"Cruz e Sousa: O Poeta do Desterro", de Sylvio Back, é um filme necessário."
Ivan Teixeira, Folha de São Paulo"Pode-se dizer que o desafio de verter, sobretudo para o inglês, o grosso fluxo de imagens adjetivizadas, aliteradas e metaforizadas de Cruz e Sousa foi vencido com louvor."
Carlos Alberto Mattos, Babel