Customer Reviews

O Amor Natural [VHS]

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This funny, charming and beautiful little film shares with you the lovely words of Brazilian poet Carlos Drummond de Andrade and the passionate people of his country. Drummond was a respected poet before his death, but his works of erotic poetry, which we published posthumously per his request, cast him in a whole new light and won him many new fans. This film shows older Brazilians reading selections of his work and sharing their own tales of sexual exploits - with humor and surprising honesty. It at once offers a glimpse of the Brazil everyone knows (the sensual, passionate, Carnaval-loving Brazil) and the human, sensitive side that most people never see. O Amor Natural celebrates the power of love, sex and language. I suggest watching it with someone you love.

After his death in the 1987, the Brazilian poet Carlos Drummondde Andrade was discovered to have left an unpublished body of eroticpoetry. Heddy Honigmann seized on the brilliant idea to have citizens of Rio Janeiro read the recently available poems out loud in front of the camera. These people are very open and insightful; I don't know how Honigmann found them. Perhaps this is just how Brazilians are.

Honigmann is, I believe, the woman whose voice we hear off camera throughout the documentary, a Dutch woman with excellent Portuguese. She comes on camera in the final sequence to read a peom.

Hedy Honigmann is one of my favorite documentary makers. From an interview with her I destilled one of my life mottoes: 'Cynicism is deadly'. With this film, which I went to see with my grandmother, at the time in her late eighties but as bubbly and candid as the Brazilian oldtimers in the film, Honigmann introduced me to the writings of Carlos Drummond d'Andrade, and I'm thankful to her. I wish I could get the film on DVD now, but alas. Also the poems are not widely available. In Portugese, if you're lucky. In English? Haven't found them, though several occasions I would have liked to share them. In Dutch, when the film came out, brilliantly translated by Pessoa-translator August Willemsen. But, sadly, now not in print and hardly available second hand, as no-one who has them seems to want to part with them. So if you have NTSC video, buy this film, and enjoy the vibrant work of Honigmann on the vibrant work of Drummond d'Andrade... you wont regret the buy. Honigmann's other films, such as on buskers in the Parisian metro, are very much recommended also

I met Carlos Drummond de Andrade one year before he passed away. The documentary on O Amor Natural is the best approach anyone could have on his work. Although he did not want the poems to be published while he was alive, the fact they did get published, is something that makes our universe more rich; If Drummond de Andrade was alive, he would be proud of the book as well as the approach taken on the documentary video. A must.