Based on Jorge Amado's bestseller published
in 1977, Carlos Diegues's film marks the return of Brazil's
biggest star, Sonia Braga, to her country's cinema after
12 years in the United States. Jorge Amado gave her the rights
to the film adaptation of her book and she herself chose her old
friend Carlos Diegues, one of the founders of Brazil's
modern cinema, to direct.
Diegues's 13th feature film and first literary
adaptation transposes the wealth of character, humour and vitality
of Jorge Amado's original text to the screen, bringing out the
contradictions of Brazilian culture: sincerity and hypocrisy,
archaism and modernity, sentimentality and corruption.
Diegues wrote the adaptation with his friend,
Bahian novelist, João Ubaldo Ribeiro, considered by many
as Jorge Amado's natural successor. Ribeiro, had to overcome his
natural aversion to scriptwriting before accepting: "Carlos
rang me up to say he had something important to discuss with me.
I got very worried when I saw him arrive looking rather sinister.
He went into a long preamble and then finally asked me to work
on Tieta with him. I was so relieved - I thought he was
going to ask for one of my kidneys - that I agreed.
To condense the 700-page book into a 120-page
script, the two men decided straightaway to concentrate the story
on Tieta and her relationship with her family. Film director and
screenwriter, Antonio Calmon helped apply the finishing touches.
After one year and six different versions, filming of Tieta
do Agreste began on 31st July 1995 and lasted for ten weeks
in two locations in Brazil's Bahia region. In keeping with his
attachment to local culture, Diegues spent three months in Bahia
auditioning many actors from the region and used local artists,
whose style impregnates descriptions in the book, in the creation
of authentic sets far from the film studios.
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