A compelling documentary by Nelson Pereira dos Santos which honours the life and work of Sergio Buarque de Hollanda, one of the leading Brazilian intellectuals of the 20th century, and author of the classic ‘Raizes do Brasil’ (The Roots of Brazil).
The great works by Sergio Buarque de Holanda, most famously his Raizes do Brazil (The Roots of Brazil), have still not been translated. His complex, sophisticated, and archive-based organic view of settlement and cultural development is more influenced by Max Weber than by Marx. Although his books are only accessible to Portuguese readers, they probably have had, in more subtle ways, the most impact on Brazilian historians in the longer term.
The film is divided into two parts, and describes how the author used to pass his days with family and friends, while also offering a historical panorama of the times, his reaction to Nazism and the years of Vargas’ dictatorship, and the arrival of the modernist movement in Brazil.
