Search The Archive
"Ruy Guerra's Mueda deals with an incident on the Mozambique border with Tanzania twenty years ago: the villagers of Mueda demanded their rights from the Portuguese colonial magistrate in the area, which led to a massacre of some 600 people when things got out of hand. Guerra, one of the founders of Brazil's 'Cinema Novo', shot the picture in just two days on the same location where it all took place. He needed only one day to assemble the villagers for a dramatization of the events on an open space before the colonial headquarters, filming the 'play' like a Soviet agitprop production on the October Revolution. Once that was done, he shot the scenes inside the building on the next day, using a satirical approach in portraying the Portuguese officer's office and manner. Then he added interviews with people who witnessed, and were involved in, the massacre. The picture may appear primitive, but its raw authenticity and intelligent juxtaposition of past and present, real and fictional, lend force to this experiment in narrative continuity."
Ronald Holloway Variety