School of Film and Media Studies

Presented by Dr. Paula Halperin, Rio, Zona Norte (1957), directed by Nelson Pereira dos Santos, holds a key place in the history of Brazilian cinema because it helped lay the groundwork for the Cinema Novo, the influential 1960s movement that reshaped filmmaking in Brazil. The movie stands out for its strong social realism, portraying life in the working-class neighborhoods of Rio de Janeiro through the story of a struggling samba composer who is exploited by the music industry, played by Grande Otelo.

By focusing on marginalized characters and openly addressing social inequality, the film drew inspiration from Italian neorealism. In Nelson Pereira dos Santos’s career, Rio, Zona Norte represents the consolidation of a socially engaged and realistic filmmaking approach that he had already begun developing in Rio 40 Graus (1955), influencing later filmmakers such as Glauber Rocha.

Today, the film remains highly relevant because it addresses social inequality, cultural marginalization, and the exploitation of artists. The film is especially important because it offers an unfiltered look at Brazilian society, moving beyond common stereotypes and tourist images.

Devised works emerging from an elective course. A collaboration between students and faculty/staff  from the following programs: Playwriting/Screenwriting, BA-THP, with support from BFA Theatre Design/Technology.

Introduction by Professor Jim Spione and Q&A afterwards with First Assistant Editor Michael Jacobi, who will provide unique insights into the legendary challenges of making the film.

One of the pinnacle achievements of 1970s American cinema, Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 hallucinatory masterpiece Apocolypse Now still retains its power to both amaze and unsettle. At once dizzyingly expansive and achingly intimate, the film uses the structural framework of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness to take us on a disturbing journey into the moral collapse of the Vietnam War, following troubled soldier Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) on a dangerous boat trip upriver into Cambodia in search of Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando)—a rogue officer who appears to have descended into madness, and now rules over his own private army of indigenous warriors. But Kurtz is not the only one who has lost his way, as the film unveils a grotesque landscape in which war has warped the minds of nearly everyone involved, from the detached brass to the drugged-out grunts.

Stunningly photographed by Vittorio Storaro, with indelible performances by Sheen, Brando and Robert Duvall as Lt. Col. Kilgore, the movie also features a richly immersive soundscape by Walter Murch that literally invented modern surround sound. The famous set pieces are all the more astonishing today, as almost everything you see on screen is happening in front of the camera, with zero digital effects and little optical trickery—an incredibly labor-intensive and risk-filled endeavor of the sort that can never happen again. Now more than ever, Apocalypse Now is an essential cinematic experience. – James Spione