Iracema - Uma Transa Amazônica (1975)

Truck driver travelling along the Transamazonic Road, a huge highway in Brazil that crosses the Amazon forest, meets a prostitute and slowly becomes aware of the problems in that region.

Directors:

Jorge Bodanzky, Orlando Senna

Writers:

Jorge Bodanzky, Hermanno Penna,

Stars:

Paulo César Peréio, Edna de Cássia, Lúcio Dos Santos

4 wins & 1 nomination.

Cast

Credited cast:
Paulo César Peréio	...	Sebastião, aka"Tião Brazil Grande"
Edna de Cássia	...	Iracema
Rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Lúcio Dos Santos
Elma Martins
Natal
Fernando Neves
Wilmar Nunes
Sidney Piñon
Rose Rodrigues
Conceição Senna

Storyline

In the 70's, the fifteen years old whore Iracema meets the truck driver Sebastião, a.k.a. "Tião Brazil Grande", and travels with him along the Amazon Forest through Transamazônica, the longest Brazilian highway recently built by the military government to bring development to the area settling landless peasants. When Tião drops her on the road, Iracema is submitted to the most decadent types of prostitution to survive.

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Plot Keywords:

brazil | forest | truck driver | truck | amazon | 

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Genres:

Drama

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Details

Country:

Brazil West Germany France

Language:

Portuguese

Release Date:

2 June 1976 (France)

Also Known As:

Iracema

Company Credits

Production Co:

Stop Film, Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF)

Technical Specs

Runtime:

91 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor)

Did You Know?

Trivia

In a scene where Iracema is serving food to a couple of truck drivers, she suddenly starts to cry. In the "Making Of" of the Brazillian DVD release of the film, actress Edna de Cássia stated that she was crying because she didn't want to serve food to Indians and because she didn't want to be considered a Native Brazilian herself.

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Soundtracks

"Você é doida demais"
by Lindomar Castilho

User Reviews

Iracema gives a new and interesting look at the politics and culture of the Amazon

The film was adopted from the 19th century novel of the same name that was written during the height of the Brazilian Romantic period. The word Iracema is an anagram for the word `America.' Accordingly, the character Iracema represents the continent of America but as the word comes from the Tupi Indian language, she shows that to be Brazilian is to be a mix of both American and Indian culture.

The full title of the film, `Iracema, uma transa amazônica,' is a clever play on words meant to give it a double meaning. The Portuguese translates into English as `an Amazonian affair' when in English the title sounds like `Trans-Amazonian' to intentionally evoke thoughts on the highly controversial Trans-Amazonian highway. The pun in the title is appropriate because while the film chronicles the many affairs of a prostitute in the Amazon, it also discusses the varied opinions of Brazilians about the state of the Amazon at that time considering the heavy industry that was pouring in.

The story follows the downward spiral of a teenage girl who comes from the interior of the Amazon to the large industrial city of Belem to become a prostitute. Even though the film was produced during the most oppressive years of a military regime under strict censorship guidelines, the anti-progress views break through. The significance of her profession of choice reflects the opinion of many Brazilians that the country began prostituting itself to foreign interests by allowing them to come into the Amazon to strip the country of its natural wonderland in the name of progress and economic gain. Iracema is meant to be an allegorical character representing the Amazon and its downward spiral from virginal and healthy to used, corrupted and decaying. That is the path that the character Iracema travels in the film.