Coorabell Hall Film Club
Wednesday 4 June

Food & drinks (Licensed) from 6.00PM
Movie starts at 7.30PM

BLACK ORPHEUS (1959)

In Black Orpheus, French director Marcel Camus reimagines the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, setting this romantic tragedy in Rio Di Janeiro amidst the festivities of Carnival. The narrative follows the complicated love triangle between Orfeu, Mira and Eurydice, played by non-professional actors. Perhaps it was their amateur enthusiasm, the exoticism of the location, or the eventual freedom which Camus was granted to make the film he wanted, but somehow he managed to capture the frenetic, pulsating atmosphere of Carnival while telling the moving and poignant story of these doomed lovers 

Black Orpheus took out a raft of prestigious awards in 1959/60, including the Palme d’Or at Cannes, the Academy Award for best Foreign Language Film and the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film. With its eye-popping photography and ravishing, epochal soundtrack by Brazilian composers Antônio Carlos Jobim and Luiz Bonfá it is credited with popularising the bossa nova genre, now a mainstay of global jazz music. However, at the time, the film was criticised in Brazil for its stereotyping of Brazilian culture and idealised portrayal of the favelas.

Today the film raises important questions around culture and representation, with its complex intersection of culture, set amongst the Afro-Brazilian community and based on an ancient Greek myth. Can art shape society and culture, particularly in relation to the complexities of racial identities? Can this dynamic interaction manifest itself and change over time?

'A riotous, rapturous explosion of sound and color, Black Orpheus is less about Orpheus's doomed love for Eurydice than about Camus's love for cinema at its most gestural and kinetic’ – Washington Post