O AMOR NATURAL

Scenario & director: Heddy Honigmann
Camera: José Guerra
Sound: Noshka van der ley
Editor: Marc Nolens Translator
poems: August Willemsen
Producer: Pieter van Huystee Film & TV
Length: 78 minutes
Format: 35 mm
Premiere: November 1996

Film prices:

• Winner of the jury price of the 15th 'Filmfestival sur lArt'1997, Montreal.
• Winner of the Prix Special during the Prix Italia, 1997
• "Certificate of Merit" Winner, San Francisco Filmfestival 1997'

Love-being an essential word-
begin this song, envelop it all.
Love guide my verse, and as it guides,
wed, soul and desire, member and vulva

A documentary film about the erotic poetry of one of the greatest Latin American poets of this century, the Brazilian Carlos Drummond de Andrade (1902-1987).

An ode to physical love, through humour and solemnity, though bluntness and tenderness. Through melancholy. O AMOR NATURAL is a virile and comforting film with moving, funny, taboo-breaking narratives about one of the wonders of creation: sex.

"When O Amor Natural of Carlos Drummond de Andrade appeared in the wonderful Dutch translation by August Willemsen, I started to dream about a film based on the poems in the book. At first I envisaged a film in which old people would simply read the poems. Beautiful old people and beautiful poems: that was enough to make an interesting film.
But after the research period in Rio de Janeiro, the film project became richer: thanks to the poems I was able to talk to wonderful old people about Drummond, about a part of their life, about - their memories of - sex and love. The poems sometimes functioned as a kind of corkscrew, sometimes as a glass of brandy. After my stay there, I called the film for myself Love and Melancholy".