“O leão das sete cabeças cortadas” – Glauber Rocha, o “Cinema Tricontinental” e o ocaso das configurações históricas opressoras

Abstract

The “Cinema Tricontinental” derives from Glauber Rocha’s commitment to operating a revolutionary political cinema focused on the discussion of the problems of the “Third World”. The foundations of such a project were theoretically elaborated in several texts signed between the second half of the 1960s and the beginning of the following decade. Of this purpose, “O leão de sete cabeças” and “Cabeças cortadas”, both made in 1970, result in two films radically opposed to the standards set by the major film centers and aimed at reverberating as an extension of the anti-imperialist contests that were in vogue at that time. In order to disseminate a “Tricontinental” message, a transnational one, this production, incited by the questions arising from that historical context, proposed a specific way of considering the history in which the temporal dynamics consisted of a close correlation between the struggles of yesterday and of today.