| Black Orpheus | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Directed by | Marcel Camus |
| Written by | Play: Vinicius de Moraes Screenplay: Jacques Viot |
| Produced by | Sacha Gordine |
| Starring | Breno Mello Marpessa Dawn Lourdes de Oliveira Léa Garcia |
| Cinematography | Jean Bourgoin |
| Music by | Luis Bonfá Antonio Carlos Jobim |
| Distributed by | GAGA Communications |
Release dates |  June 12, 1959  December 21, 1959 |
Running time | 100 min. |
| Country | France |
| Language | Portuguese |
Black Orpheus (Orfeu Negro in Portuguese) is a 1959 French film directed by Marcel Camus that is based on the play Orfeu da Conceiçāo, which was written by Vinicius de Moraes. Produced and filmed in Brazil, the title for the movie is taken from 'Orphée noir' by Jean-Paul Sartre. 'Orphée noir' was the preface to Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache edited by Léopold Sédar Senghor, an anthology of poetry featuring black and Madagascan poets.[1] In the preface Sartre endorses Négritude—a literary and political movement developed in the 1930s by a group that included the future Senegalese President Léopold Sédar Senghor, Martinican poet Aimé Césaire, and the Guianan Léon Damas. The Négritude writers found solidarity in a common black identity as a rejection of French colonial racism. They believed that the shared black heritage of members of the African diaspora was the best tool in fighting against French political and intellectual hegemony and domination. The play and film were reinterpreted in 1999 by Carlos Diegues under the title Orfeu.[1]