Ruy Guerra

Biography

The second half of the 1950s Guerra spent on film crews: after the film school in Paris he worked as an assistant, and in 1954 he made the short film “Quand le soleil dort”. In July 1958 he stepped ashore in Rio de Janeiro. Brazil remained his main country.

He was born on 22 August 1931 in Lourenço Marques (now Maputo), in Portuguese East Africa. By some accounts he moved with his family to Portugal as a child; by others he grew up in Mozambique. As a teenager he wrote film criticism, stories and chronicles and shot films on 8 mm. In 1952, at twenty, he entered the Institut des hautes études cinématographiques (IDHEC) in Paris, and he graduated from it. In France he began working as an assistant to cameramen and directors. His first feature, “Os Cafajestes” (1962), is about a spoiled young man from a wealthy family who, on learning that his father is ruined, hatches a scheme. The film was shown at the Berlin festival, where it competed for the Golden Bear. More than a million people saw it, and within Cinema Novo it was a rare commercial success. In 1964 came “Os Fuzis”, a story of poverty and violence in the Brazilian backcountry. In Berlin it won a Silver Bear, the special jury prize. The film is usually named among the best in the history of Brazilian cinema, and it put Guerra in the front rank of Cinema Novo directors. Later he made the international production “Tendres Chasseurs” (1969), with Sterling Hayden in the lead, and “Os Deuses e os Mortos” (1970), again nominated for the Golden Bear.

Then came a pause. The political situation in Brazil under the military dictatorship forced him to stop filming; by some accounts he went abroad to work for several years. In 1973 the play “Calabar: In Praise of Betrayal”, which he wrote with Chico Buarque, was staged in the theatre. He returned to film with “A Queda”, made together with Nelson Xavier, a kind of sequel to “Os Fuzis”. In Berlin it too won a Silver Bear. The year of its release is given differently: 1976 or 1978.

From 1972 he has also been known as an actor. He played Pedro de Ursúa in Werner Herzog’s “Aguirre, the Wrath of God”, and, I think, that small part is remembered more widely than many of his own films.

In 1980 Guerra went back to Mozambique, by then independent. There he made “Mueda, Memória e Massacre”, the first feature film in the country’s history. In Mozambique he also directed many short films and took part in founding the National Institute of Cinema. For a time he also lived and worked in Cuba.

His next works were made in Latin America and drew on literary texts. In Mexico he shot “Eréndira” (1983), based on a novella by Gabriel García Márquez, with Cláudia Ohana in the title role; it was in the main competition at the Cannes festival. “Ópera do Malandro” (1985–1986) is based on a musical play by Chico Buarque, a free reworking of Brecht’s “The Threepenny Opera”. “Kuarup” (1989) adapts a novel by Antônio Callado and was also nominated at Cannes. For television he made a story after García Márquez, “Fábula de la bella palomera” (1988). Even before that Guerra wrote song lyrics with Chico Buarque, Milton Nascimento, Carlos Lyra and Edu Lobo. “Estorvo” (2000) was his third nomination for the Palme d’Or. “Portugal S.A.” (2004) was the only film he made in Portugal; it was entered at the Moscow International Film Festival. In 1987 Portugal made him a Commander of the Order of Merit. In all, his work has been nominated 24 times for national and international awards, and nine of them were wins.