In this “fake documentary” a doctor returns to Brazil after studies in Paris. Setting out to practice medicine, he becomes an indigenous messiah and, in time, a cannibal. Omar’s cinema distinguishes itself from both the aesthetics of Cinema Novo and Marginal Cinema’s extreme photographic realism by what he has called a “hyper-language,” a collage constructed with many kinds of images, printed words, letters, drawings, symbols, documentary material, archives of family films, snapshots, and, in the voice-over, dozens of texts from anthropological research, baroque narratives, popular almanacs, sermons, poems, and citations of all sorts—all set off with a purposeful and radical lack of perfection in its overall visual look. (Museum of Modern Art, NYC)
