Nelson Pereira dos Santos

Who is Nelson Pereira dos Santos?

Nelson Pereira dos Santos is a Brazilian film director. He directed films such as Vidas Secas, based on the book with the same name by Brazilian writer Graciliano Ramos.

Pereira was born in São Paulo. The first feature film he directed was Rio 40°, which was released in 1955. The film is a chronicle of life in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, and it influenced several other directors, spurring the Cinema Novo moment. In 1963, he was a member of the jury at the 3rd Moscow International Film Festival. In 1981 he was a member of the jury at the 12th Moscow International Film Festival.

His most well-known film outside of Brazil is Como Era Gostoso o Meu Francês. It was entered into the 21st Berlin International Film Festival. The film takes place in the sixteenth century and details the alleged cannibalistic practices of the indigenous Tupinamba warrior tribe against the French and Portuguese colonizers of the Brazilian littoral. The film is something of a black comedy about European colonialism—one that makes satirical use of the Brazilian modernist trope of Antropofagia, then recently revived by the Tropicalismo movement of the 1960s—as well as a bitter commentary on the historical genocide of the indigenous tribes in Latin America and the gradual destruction of their civilization.