O Rodrigo da Banca veio ao meu estúdio conversar sobre meu processo de criação, conhecer outros projetos com os quais andei envolvido e saber quais são as novidades. Quer dar uma olhada onde são feitos o números do Necronauta e muitas outras HQs?

Além disso, entrevista com Rogério de Campos, da Conrad e com Sidney Gusman!

O primeiro bloco aqui!

E aqui, o segundo!

Imagem histórica da passagem de Lampião pela cidade das Vertentes.

Sim! Maria Bonita aparece na imagem.

Lampião

Written by Stephen Guild

Every country has its folk heroes, and Brazil is no different.  The outlaw, Lampião, is certainly one of the most colorful and controversial of them all.  He has been compared to Robin Hood and regarded as a peasant revolutionary against the feudal farmers of the region by some.  Others have considered him brutal and ruthless and a vicious, merciless, psychopathic thug.

Lampião, originally Virgulino Ferreira da Silva, was born in 1897 in the village of Serra Talhada, in the sertão (semi-arid backlands) of the state of Pernambuco, which traditionally has been one of the most backward areas of the country.  Virgulino, however, was literate and used reading glasses, an anomaly for the region where he lived.  He was a leather craft artisan, who lived with his family until he was 21, when his father was killed in a confrontation with the police.   He vowed revenge on the police and formed a gang called the cangaceiros (men of the cangaço, or badlands).

He called himself Lampião, which means “lantern,” because he carried a lantern during his nighttime raids.  Another version holds that his name referred to “lightning,” because of the lightning quick raids he made on small cities and farms across the Nordeste.  Killing people and cattle, ransacking, taking hostages for ransom, torturing, fire-branding, maiming, and raping by the cangaceiros were common.  Incidents of Lampião digging out a man’s eyeballs with a knife and cutting off a woman’s tongue have been verified.

He was joined in 1930 by his girlfriend, Maria Bonita (Beautiful Mary), who had long black hair, big sultry eyes, and a shapely body.  It was love at first sight – and they clearly shared more than just romance. The gang had ridden into her town on the first day they met, and she walked up to him, pointed to a man and said “That is my husband – shoot him.” Lampião drew his pistol and shot the man in cold blood. When the cangaceiros rode out of town, Maria Bonita was at Lampião’s side and remained there until their violent deaths together.

Maria Bonita

Captain Virgulino, as Lampião liked to call himself, had no shortage of enemies. He and the police were mortal foes. The state and local politicians resented his prestige and power.  As hard as they tried, catching and killing Lampião was not easy. He knew the country side, he had spies, and he had friends. Most of the police sent against him were less than enthusiastic about getting ambushed in the brush.

Those who opposed him could lose everything, including their lives. If betrayed to the police, the cancageiros were merciless. On the other hand, if Lampião and his henchmen came to town, and he had no grudge or couldn’t find anything of value he wanted, he would quite often arrange a party with music and plenty of cachaça.

Finally, in July of 1938, Lampião and his band were betrayed by one of his supporters and were ambushed in one of his hideouts in the state of Sergipe by police armed with machine guns. Their heads were cut off and first brought to Recife as proof they were actually dead.   One account has the police officer who killed Lampião showing the heads he was carrying in a suitcase to a fellow traveler while riding the train to Recife.  Eventually, the heads were taken to Bahia, where they were on display for many years, until the families of Lampião and Maria Bonita were able to reclaim the preserved heads to finally bury them.

Lampião and Maria Bonita have become subjects of innumerable folk stories, books, popular pamphlets (cordel literature), songs, movies, and a number of TV soap operas. The gang’s favorite song, Mulher Rendera, which they would sing as they went into a town, is a tune almost every Brazilian knows and is also the name of a popular chain of restaurants.  The Museum of Mamulengo in Olinda has a whole floor dedicated to representations of Lampião and Maria Bonita.

Cordel (Left) Mamulengo Museum Exhibit (Right)

Like any legendary figure, Lampião is a mixture of fact and fiction, but there is no denying that he was one of the most notorious bandits in Northeastern Brazil.

The author gratefully acknowledges the many sources that were consulted in the writing of this article.  While they provide the foundation, the interpretation and opinion are entirely those of the author.

Stephen Guild is Executive Editor of Recife Guide.

Em 1975, a Rede Globo tentou estrear a novela de Dias Gomes, Roque Santeiro. A novela fazia uma sátira á cultura brasileira, principalmente das pequenas cidades, envolvendo a necessidade do culto e manutenção de mitos, por motivações econômicas, inclusive. Na novela, a história se passava na cidade fictícia do nordeste Asa Branca. Nela foi criada o mito do milagreiro Roque Santeiro (porque modelava santos de barro), que teria morrido como mártir depois de uma batalha com o cancaceiro Navalhada e que, após sua morte, foi atribuido a ele, uma série de milagres.

Contudo, no auge da censura televisiva, antes mesmo de estreá-la, a novela foi censurada. E com isso, uma interessante abertura também deixou de ser transmitida. Baseada na linguagem dos córdeis, livretos de poesias populares comuns no nordeste, e na estética das xilogravuras, marca registrada desses livretos, a vinheta simulava uma narrativa fantástica, na qual os atores eram apresentados em meio a ilustrações de seres mitólógicos, monstros e personagens cangaceiras. Em algumas dessas ilustrações percebe-se claramente a apresença de elementos do folclore e da cultura nacional, assim como nos próprios cordéis.

Em 1985, a Rede Globo felizmente retoma o projeto de Roque Santeiro. Mas, nesse momento, foi incumbido a Hans Donner a tarefa de modernizar a novela, trazendo uma nova vinheta de abertura. E assim como já de costume, ele utilizou a ambigüidade e o surrealismo através de um interessante jogo de imagens.  Nela, ele mostrava de forma inusitada a invasão do homem no espaço natural brasileiro. Tratores andavam sobre espigas de milhos, bóias-frias caminhavam sobre folhas gigantes, motocicletas ziguezaguevam sobre cocos,  barcos navegam sobre uma asa azul de borboleta, entre outras situações curiosas. Para a produção desses efeitos, foram recorridos aos recursos do cromaqui e de miniaturas, embora a idéia incial de Donner era utilizar carros de verdade na cena em que há um engarrafamento sobre uma vitória-régia.

Já a assinatura gráfica, com aspecto bem mais contemporâneo que a versão anterior, tentava evidenciar de forma sucinta dois dos aspectos mais presentes na sua personagem principal que dá título a novela: a brasilidade, através do paleta cromática; e a santidade, por uma simples interferência formal na logotipia, transformando o “Q” central em uma auréola estilizada.

Mesmo  trazendo uma associação mais coerente a história, a abertura de 1975 trazia algumas limitações comerciais em relação a segunda versão, que tinha um apelo mais popular e uma linguagem mais dinâmica e divertida, incluindo até a alegre trilha sonora “Santa Fé”, cantada por Moraes Moreira, em substituição da melodia da primeira abertura (aproveitada na abertura de Sinhazinha Flô, em 1978) que possuía um ritmo mais pesado e regional, oriundo da cultura do sertão nordestino e do xaxado.

Abertura de 1975

Abertura de 1985

Postado por André Luiz Sens

(Confira este artigo também no Tele História)

]]> http://evilking.net/2008/09/30/cangaceiro-2/ Tue, 30 Sep 2008 16:32:33 +0000 EvilKing http://evilking.net/2008/09/30/cangaceiro-2/

Punhal e bainha usados por cangaceiros; a lâmina mede aproximadamente 67cm e o cabo, 15cm. Fuzil Mauser, modelo 1908 calibre 7×57. Arma mais utilizada pelos cangaceiros após Março de 1926.

• O laçamento do Necronauta#5 na livraria HQMix foi animal! Muita gente apareceu e todas as cópias do quinto número sairam de lá com um autográfo e um skecth de caveira.

• A entrevista no HQCia tbm foi bem legal e assim que eles editarem e me passarem o link, posto aqui.

• O Necronauta acabou de receber uma super resenha no site HomemNerd do Edu Fernandes! Valeu Edu! Confira aqui.

• E pra quem está querendo comprar o Necronauta, mas não tem como vir a SP, a Comix está vendendo online no link: COMIX, sai caro pelo frete, mas enterga em todo o país. E estou fechando nas próximas semanas de distribuir em BH pela Livraria Leitura e no Rio de Janeiro pela Livraria Dona Laura.

E segue um sketch de cangaceiros:

The Seamstress: A Novel by Frances De Pontes Peebles

Some of the best aspects of reading fiction are visiting places you may never otherwise see and providing a glimpse of what it might be like to live in a different time in history.  The Seamstress, which takes place mainly between Taquaritinga and Recife, Brazil during the late 1920s and early 1930s, is an engaging novel that provides the opportunity for both.  It tells the story of Emilia and Luzia dos Santos, orphaned sisters who are raised by their Aunt Sofia, the seamstress for the community’s Colonel.  The sisters, while very different people, both find peace, creative release, and ultimately their destinies in sewing.

Emilia dos Santos is the oldest sister, and she has high aspirations for her life.  She is not content to remain forever in Taquaritinga, a small interior town whose prospects do not allow her, despite her charm, the ability to rise above her warm, yet meager existence.  Her refusal to consider the many bachelors who have asked Aunt Sofia for her hand has given her a reputation for being a young woman who thinks too highly of herself, but she finds her escape in her collection of Fon Fon magazines, which provide patterns for the latest fashions along with guidance on being a lady and short stories about gentlemen and romance.  What gives her hope is marrying a gentleman and moving to Recife, where life is beautiful and full of opportunity.

A vintage cover of Fon Fon from the 1950s

Luzia dos Santos is quite the opposite from her sister.  She has no interest at all in her sister’s fashion magazines or fantasies of Recife.  As a young child she fell from a tree and broke her arm.  Because of the inadequate medical care she received, her arm is permanently bent at a 90 degree angle.  Her disability makes ends all prospects of marriage for her and she becomes somewhat of an outcast in Taquaritinga, earning herself the knickname Victrola because her arm resembled the arm of the popular record player.  Unlike Emilia, Luzia rebels against society and its ways.  She fights every way she can because she sees no real future for herself until The Hawk and his band of cangaceiros invade Taquaritinga looking for water during the dry season.

Brazil in the early part of the 20th century was a corrupt and harsh place to live, especially outside of the large cities surrounding the coast.  There was no fully authoritative centralized government, so the wealthy landowners, or Colonels, ruled their territory as they saw fit.  The ease of life in the interior portions of the country was very much dependent upon the weather and the life experience of the current Colonel.  As many of them were prone to be tyrants, this gave rise to the cangacos, groups of bandits who roamed throughout the countryside as nomads in search of food, money and, above all else, revenge against the Colonels and gentry.  Emilia and Luzia came of age at a time when a powerful leader to over power in the central government through revolution and began to take power away from the Colonels.  This change in political climate brought reforms, but also chaos into the country.  As much as it is about the vastly different lives Emilia and Luzia led, The Seamstress tells the story of how the relationship between coastal and interior Brazil changed this new government took hold of the country.

Emilia and Luzia found that getting what they wanted always comes at a price.  Because of their background, they are never fully welcomed in the communities they joined.  What kept them from alienation and made them whole was the only things they took with them from Taquaritinga, their survival skills and their passion for sewing.  When they find themselves at odds in the new political climate, will their bond be enough to save them?

The author really brings to life both the environmental harshness of the arid Brazilian countryside and the political and social harshness of Recife.  While the cangaceiros were fighting to stay relevant in an age when the Colonels were losing stature and authority, the upper class in Recife were fighting to rid the country of the terror created by these random acts of violence and retribution.  The fear felt by the establishment opened the door to use phrenology to catalog criminals in order to predict who will become harmful to the state.  It was a fascinating look at a developing Latin American country.

The Seamstress expertly blends the threads of family, culture, crime, punishment, sin and redemption into a beautiful canvas that highlights both an exotic land and an intriguing time in Latin American history.  While it took me a while to read this book, there isn’t any part that felt unnecessary or should have otherwise not been included.  I thoroughly enjoyed reading this novel.  I grew to care deeply for Emilia and Luzia and was interested in their world.  I hope to learn more from Brazil and look forward to reading more from Frances De Pontes Peebles in the future.  The story of these sisters and their country will stay with me for a long time to come.

*******

To buy this novel, click here.

The Seamstress by Frances de Pontes Peebles
Release date: August 5, 2008

Another one of those stories taking place where I have very little knowledge – Brazil, 1920’s and 30’s. The story of two sisters raised in the interior of the country by their aunt, a skilled seamstress who passes on her knowledge. Emilia dreams of being a fancy lady, and Luzia really doesn’t know what, considering an accident as a child left her with a permanently bent arm. Then a famous group of cangaceiros (whom I like to refer to as scrub pirates) come to town…

This is one of those back and forth stories where you spend a couple months with one sister and then with the other, overlapping slightly or, at times, not at all. It was different from stories with the same format in that each still knew what the other was doing even though they weren’t in contact. Not because of ghouls or so, but because of the newspaper. It kind of turns into a way to communicate. You’ll see.

From a critic’s standpoint I’d have to agree with the review I read that said the author could have left out a few passages, but from the standpoint of someone who was really enjoying a good story, I wouldn’t have minded had she included more seemingly unnecessary passages, as the longer the book is, the more I get to hang out with Emilia and Luzia. Also, I’d like to give credit to the author for her skillz in describing. I said I had very little previous knowledge of Brazil in the 20’s and 30’s for the picturing of it, but Frances de Pontes Peebles painted quite a picture regardless. I could see this book as a movie but I hope it doesn’t come to that.

I think Elaina would enjoy this one.