The backwoods became a river and the river became the backwoods: a German filmmaker and the Brazilian Cinema Novo

The German filmmaker Werner Herzog (1942) filmed in the Amazon during the 1970s in search of previously unseen landscapes, directing his focus toward the ‘margins of civilization’, as he stated years before to director Glauber Rocha, one of the icons of Brazil’s Cinema Novo movement. In this article, we will analyze the signs of cinemanovismo in Herzog’s work along with how this dialog helped construct its view, understanding how the Glauberian aesthetic was assimilated by a group of German filmmakers linked to what became known as New German Cinema.

Keywords
Werner Herzog; Glauber Rocha; Brazilian Cinema Novo