A Lei da Terra
Director Grupo Zero
Countries Portugal
Duration 67 min
Synopsis
"The Law of the Land" was shot in the Summer of 1976 by a collective of filmmakers and it's a thorough analysis of the process of the Agrarian Reform. The film voices the farmers' revolt and organization. The film was usually screened together with S. Eisenstein's "Old and New", a depiction of peasant life. Alberto Seixas Santos, which was involved in the collective said: "We weren't doing a film that would stir the people because we were looking coldly at the situation and the film was structured like an essay. Still there is in the end a 'revolutionary shot' of the women raising their fists to the air and a red flag, but beyond this all the other shots in the film try to analyse the power structures in Alentejo and the history of the peasant struggles against that power. We were aware that we were showing something that was about to disappear. The peasants were also aware, even if they resisted up until the end..."
"The Law of the Land" was shot in the Summer of 1976 by a collective of filmmakers and it's a thorough analysis of the process of the Agrarian Reform. The film voices the farmers' revolt and organization. The film was usually screened together with S. Eisenstein's "Old and New", a depiction of peasant life. Alberto Seixas Santos, which was involved in the collective said: "We weren't doing a film that would stir the people because we were looking coldly at the situation and the film was structured like an essay. Still there is in the end a 'revolutionary shot' of the women raising their fists to the air and a red flag, but beyond this all the other shots in the film try to analyse the power structures in Alentejo and the history of the peasant struggles against that power. We were aware that we were showing something that was about to disappear. The peasants were also aware, even if they resisted up until the end..."