"This film is a homage to Dr. Artur Alves Nogueira born in 1892 and died in 1946." "We gathered aspects of his activity in the coastal coffee region better known as the 'Scorpion Zone'" "Where even today traces of his passage remains in the folk memory." "It was based on oral testimonies and documents filmed by Dr. Artur himself, recently released by his widow, Mrs. Grimanesa Le Petit." "At 20, he goes to Europe to study medicine at the Sorbonne." "Son of a rich ambassador, his fate seemed to be a regular worker." "No remarkable fact suggested the astonishing career he'd have after returning to Brazil." "Here, in a few years he'd become the center of phenomena and social fanaticism similar to the Indian messiahs of the colonial period." "In 1922, when Modern Art Week broke out in Sao Paolo, he was just a graduate living in Paris." "His bohemian nature led him to attend the artistic avant-garde, becoming a personal friend and doctor of Picasso, Aragon, Éluard," "Max Ernst and André Breton." "Andre Breton would also include his advice in the Surrealist Manifesto of 1924." "In 1925, he returns to Brazil." "He arrives with European eyes." "Desirous of certain risks in his career he waives an office in Sao Paolo and installs himself as a GP in Rosária do Oeste and in the turbulent coffee region, where, of 600 houses," "100 were brothels." "Fighting against the hostility of a human and natural environment he soon becomes famous as the only surgeon of the region, under the control of Col. João Pinto." "He brings stories from Europe, cubist prints, post cards and devices." "The exoticism of his mild manners gives him a great personal magnetism, making it easier to make friends and influence people." "He introduces the movie camera and for twenty years he records episodes of daily life." "Some of these movies are included in this film." "Privately, he considered his job there a self-flagellation in tropical America." "About the Scorpion Zone..." "There's no registry of all economic units." "According to the Colombo report there's an odd overlapping of coffee and sugar cane cycles with gold mining and cattle." "About 80% of the population migrates in the harvest season searching for work." "In the local mythology, the gods have a migratory feature, occupying successively various paradise points." "Col. João Pinto owns 90% of the land and, in the village, is the owner of the grocery store, of the bakery lottery pharmacy, the restaurant the snooker's house barber shop main church cooperative building" "the bank and dozens of homes." "Dr. Artur began to collect detailed biographical info about 74 messiahs of the region." "There were hundreds of movements of mystical liberation which reached a quasi-endemic situation." "Land of election, of messiahs and prophets between the cabocla population, they, in the last three centuries, provoked the migration of entire cities from one Zone's extreme to another." "The messiahs interpreted omens and protected men from the attack of natural elements." "They enchanted the hunt and distributed magical power to the needy." "Central Theme:" "The search for paradise, a land without evil." "There, the archaic societies would recover their lost traditions." "And would attend again to the creation of living creatures, of islands and tides, of solid lands, of human groups and their institutions." "In Paradise, a supernatural currency was running without heads, or tails." "Money" "I want money." "Dr. Artur, very early would begin to suffer physical and mental mutations, leaving the world of work he had built so slowly." "But first, let's examine his daily life." "He made a point of eating like the natives." "Having for lunch two crabs, turtle muscles and eggs, roasted lizard," "Macajuba coconuts, half-rotten buriti fruit, served with a tasty mush of locusts." "At municipal parties" "Dr. Artur had to get used to eating the human meat of the enemies, who, before dying, were required to say" ""I, your food, am coming"" "Human meat was sweet and soft." "The natives didn't have in their language:" "F" "L" "R" "So, they couldn't understand the terms" "The Faith" "The Law and Royalty" "Women gave birth alternately to children and small animals." "He was at his creative peak." "In a small pharmaceutical lab he modified the formulae of drugs adapting them to local conditions." "The Precious Dye the Oriental Tonic the specific 'Fatty'" "Bristol Pills" "English Water" "Celestial Balsam and Capivarol, the most famous." "He read from Aristotle and the commentaries on the Koran to the Revue de Médicine Tropicale" "He synthesized the famous pills of Dr. Artur of multifunctional activity:" "Digestive, calming, purgative, laxative and antiphlogistic." "One day, the idea of an almanac comes to edit a copy of an almanac like Bristol or Capivarol about the Dr. Artur Pills" "The rancher João Pinto, business partner ensures the production, distribution and continuity of the work." "His grandson had been cured by the pills." "An archive of letters from ordinary folk about the cures." "For example:" "It is fulfilling duty and gratitude that I come to bring to your Lordship this knowledge." "I suffered horribly for nine months, severe pains in the stomach and chest, even to the point of having a consultation for an operation." "Already exhausted, physically and financially," "I let everything run to chance." "One day, reading in the almanacs of this wonderful product," "I decided to try it." "The results were astounding." "Another typical letter:" "I must tell you, in the whole world there's no other drug so prodigious, and I swear, anytime, if required, that the Dr. Artur Pills are made by a holy miracle." "I'll always be an admirer and propagandist." "Another letter:" "Due to the overwork that my job requires from me" "I was struck by a general weakness so profound that I thought death was at hand, making me crazy, without hope, etc, etc, etc and etc" "Dr. Artur Hyper-Medicalized the Scorpion Zone, which involved him in a mesh of conspiracies aiming to de-medicalize it." "In the Scorpion Zone, everything is quicksand." "He collaborated in the violent newspapers of the Zone" "'The Mirror of Justice'" "'The Voice of Reason'" "'Letters to the People'" "'The Two Liberal Buddies'" "'Dr." "Bloodhound'" "'Nurse of the Nutters'" "'The New Censor' and 'The Rocket'" "Some of them in the Tupi language." "There is little information about his marriage to Grimanesa Le Petit or, rather, which obscure alliance Dr. Artur wanted to make?" "Led by her, he founded a rich girls' school" "Whose ad said:" ""We teach English, French and good manners." "Further:" "to make fabric flowers, bead work, candlestick supports, sewing for both sexes." "As well as to play the piano and pan pipe of 13 pipes." "The pupils will have their hearts nourished by love and virtue so that they can dictate the day of their parenthood." "Dr. Artur was happy, felt himself an innovator, but unknown forces began to sabotage his love life." "In the beginning, it was only a simple inability to act aggressively." "He spoke to himself as he would to an almanac reader" ""This soft nervousness, this little headache which torments him all those black ideas which bother him, suggest that his intestines are in need of a corrective"" "But on April 25th strange symptoms started coinciding with unexpected atmospheric phenomena." "Needles in the body, cold sweats, anxiety and intense diarrhea in the morning." "He immediately loses his ability to distinguish the 13 flavors of coffee." "Crossing the sky of the Scorpion Zone the same comet to which, in 1577, the loss of El Rey Sebastian is attributed." "The astronomer Palatare Navarra y Rocafur comments:" "This comet becomes worse each year." "The following week, Dr. Artur worsens generalized tremors, gripes, loss of senses and a state of shock, painful cramps and vertigo." "He misinterprets his symptons as abuse of "Spanish Fly"" "that he has eaten as the elixir of youth." "May 1 was the eclipse of the sun" "Father Diogo Laines reports:" "Dr. Arthur, seeing something so noble as the darkening of the sun against every natural order, explained:" "Either God is delusional, or the world machine is crumbling." "Late in May, the symptoms reaches their apex." "Visual disturbances, the so-called 'scintillating scotomatas'" "Retention of urine for 24 hours." "Blood from the nose and gums." "A voice tells him:" "Defend yourself, or you'll be annihilated." "Amazing growth of hair." "Psychical excitation, resulting sometimes, in intense erotic delirium." "When detained at home he rips all nearby objects." "Frequent bouts of self-mutilation, trying to bite his own buttocks, where, he said, the harmful virus was inoculated." "Some men have to listen carefully although things still don't make sense." "It is unique characters, like Dr. João de Laparilla Duque author of The Warnings of Mrs. Truth" "Gaspar Barata de Mendonça, expert on rituals of mummification" "Elesbão das Chagas" "Corroded by ideas and blue-blooded worms" "Plutarco Benimou, mystic, small industrialist." "On July 10 arises the turning point." "At midday" "Dr. Artur was inspecting the village with his movie camera amid hallucinations of Euclides da Cunha." "Beasts wrapped in bloody bandages, broken arms in slings crooked legs, feet deformed by swelling, pierced with thorns, breasts sewn with bullets or knitted with knives." "All the traumas and all the miseries." "At five in the afternoon" "It was just five in the afternoon." "A boy brought the white sheet at five in the afternoon." "A basket of lime made ready at five in the afternoon." "The rest was death and only death at five in the afternoon." "The wind blew the cotton wool away at five in the afternoon." "And oxide scattered nickel and glass at five in the afternoon." "Now the dove and the leopard fight at five in the afternoon." "And a thigh with a desolate horn at five in the afternoon." "The bass-pipe sound began at five in the afternoon." "The bells of arsenic, the smoke at five in the afternoon." "Silent crowds on corners at five in the afternoon." "And only the bull with risen heart!" "at five in the afternoon." "When the snow-sweat appeared at five in the afternoon." "when the arena was splashed with iodine at five in the afternoon." "death laid its eggs in the wound at five in the afternoon." "At five in the afternoon." "At just five in the afternoon." "A coffin on wheels for his bed at five in the afternoon." "Bones and flutes sound in his ear at five in the afternoon." "Now the bull bellows on his brow at five in the afternoon." "The room glows with agony at five in the afternoon." "Now out of distance gangrene comes at five in the afternoon." "Wounds burning like suns at five in the afternoon, and the people smashing windows at five in the afternoon." "At five in the afternoon." "Ay, what a fearful five in the afternoon!" "It was five on every clock!" "It was five of a dark afternoon!" "At 11pm he announces to his friend Gonsalo Anise Bandarra" ""I saw Satan fall from heaven like a lightning bolt"" "Evidence:" "He displays his back covered with third degree burns with the formation of scabs." "And a pine tree charred and still smoking." "On the shadow of this pine, on May 21, 1888 rested Dom Pedro II," "the imperial family and the imperial entourage, on their way to Curitiba." "It was the last warning." "Dr. Arthur left home and country to preach under the most harmful weather in the Torrid Zone." "And he had the dramatic revelation of his true name:" "'Oberá' which means: 'Splendor'." "In his files and recorded tapes he reviewed the history of his precursors in the region." "A supposed São Laurenço who preached imminent universal combustion and organized shows with five thousand settlers confessing in the public square." "El Corregedor, who forced Indians to worship him at the weekend against the wishes of his wife." "His saliva was a powerful ally in the fight against malaria." "He taught the perforation of the nose to eliminate maternal blood, focusing on men." "He was hanged" "Dr. Arthur crosses this initial period amid visions." "His fixed idea is:" ""The 2000 will not come"." "He travels through thought to the land of the illustrious dead and shows an old Europe for generations without vigour." "A specter is haunting Europe" "The 2000 will not come." "Only the chosen ones from The Scorpion Zone will escape the ultimate night." "The order is:" "Give up all that the foreigner brought." "Nylon thread, cosmetics, canned food, the combustion engine." "To preserve tradition" "European food is prohibited." "It produces a diabolical body weight." "The body must be preserved through starvation, until its lightness finds the path to heaven." "His father, The Sun, sent him a daily newsletter with instructions for the government of the world and the restoration of empire." "Dr. Artur memorized everything." "Technical details about the coming flood." "Schedules for the pursuit of earthly paradise." "Fact sheets about present and future foreign kings to overcome." "And a pilgrimage route to the land without evil which the Guaranis have sought since the 16th century." "One of the oldest messianic thefts known happened in 1549." "3000 Tupinambás fled a Jesuit imprisonment in Bahia" "Guided by two shamans who claimed to be the creators of sky and thunder." "They tried to cross the South American continent." "The shamans staged dances and prescriptions." "Strict rituals aimed at preserving the culture preserved." "They healed the sick and bald, explained the filigree of the doctrine." "The Indians were dying along the way" "They sought the land of heroic immortality." "and everlasting rest." "13 years later, in Xaxapóias, Peru 250 survivors are trapped." "Dr. Arthur made no effort to attract the cangaceiros and fanatics." "He preferred to play with time because time is the key to strategy" "He settled on the river in Cari which housed four parishes, protective of lepers." "It was the period of inner purification." "He would be accompanied by a black slave with whom he claimed to have a daughter." "With Lucifer he called himself the Pastor and Captain of the blind nations." "He sends his double, Fortunato Xumbergas, to the sky to extinguish the meteors." " When you were born?" " July 8" " How many years have you attend the troupe?" " 38 years with Bola Preta's troupe" " And why come out with this fantasy?" " It's a tradition now!" " I've been the standard-bearer of Bola Preta for 25 years..." " And now I'm a clown!" " Very well!" "He encourages the Indians to stop working so the plants, henceforth, grew alone, the arrows will hunt animals automatically." "He promises many spicy enemies to devour." "Enemies' rifles will spit water." "When visitors asked him how the people of Europe are, he said:" "They are aerial monsters, hairy, with their heads pierced, blurting out tobacco smoke." "They are footless, their nails are a meter in length, they have a velvety body, like bats." "Five years go by." "We find him as Adam putting, into Hebrew, the proper names of all the animals, renaming 15,000 adults." "He healed the sick by shamanism, by blowing on them, and was helped by women whose profession was to suck and lick the aching parts." "He revived the forbidden cult of Jurupari." "With flagellation rituals and the consumption of strongly alcoholic drinks." "Possessed by the gods, some inexperienced sectarians offered themselves in sacrifice by throwing themselves off cliffs in a conspicuous suicide." "The itinerant notary Tutimosis Loposiana, tells that such was the zeal of Dr. Arthur in converting souls that walking from one part to another special measures were necessary to alleviate the traffic of pilgrims in the foothills of Sierra de Ibiapaba." "He assimilated Christ as a civilizing hero of the Tupani type." "And the saints, the sorcerer-healers believed to promote a truly national syncretism." "His hidden desire was to walk through the sky as his contemporary did," "Bartolomeu de Gusmão." "One day the immigration began" "The band sought to retrace a centenary rout of Guarani messianism." "The Direction:" "Santa Cruz, north of the Scorpion Zone" "In his cohorts they sowed maps of uncharted territories with names of the positivist calendar." "Dr. Arthur went ahead dressed in white and was carried on crossed swords." "40 concubines, chosen from amongst the most healthy surrounded him, singing licentious songs." "He claimed that the statues adored by Christians were disguised statues of his wife, Grimanesa Le Petit." "About her, says Euclides da Cunha, who knew her personally:" "Scary megaera, rebarbative witch, the most hideous old woman of these hinterlands, frightening picture of voracious motherhood." "One of her feet is human, the other, animal." "Dr. Arthur wanted his love story on an epic scale." "But he went into secret negotiations with his mistress," "Dorotéia de Gracia Tavarela D'almira, author of the book:" "Maxims of virtue and beauty by which Diófanes, Criminéia and Emirena," "Prince of Thebes defeated the hardest moves of doom by imitating the wise Fenelon on his journey to Thelema." "The walk was long, even fatiguing." "The group would still stop to dance, sing and fast, following the ritual in detail." "At times, until the total annihilation of their forces." "On the way, once, they stumbled upon the corpse of a woman strung up, hanging from a tree branch" "Dr Artur says:" "The gods have made all the trees to give fruit." "Sometimes, to distract them, he'd tell trite jokes from his old almanac like the ones of "professional diseases"" "Lawyers have "forumculosis"" "Farmers have milk leg" "Dancers, pernicious 'akneemia'" "Warehouse Clerk, loss of weight" "Sailors, 'searrhosis' of the liver" "Public officials, sleeping disease" "Hunters, elephantiasis" "Grammarians, conjunctivitis" "Miners, 'coalera'" "Jockeys, galloping TB" "Players of Billiards, 'biliary' calculations" "Sextons, 'bellagra'" "Drivers, 'taxicardia'" "Soldiers, gunner-ear" "Painters, yellow fever." "Dr. Arthur began to demand unconditional worship." "This would tend to hasten the advent of the golden age." "A critical review of Brazilian culture." "During the journey they practiced abortion and infanticide" "They would involve themselves in wild discussions on how to interpret The Last Supper." "When crossing rural properties" "Dr. Artur needed to unite certain pilgrims who wanted to kill and eat all the baptized children they met en route." "Arriving in Santa Cruz, just to impress, he gives order to construct a shack carpeted with red velvet, with sinks of crystal, alabaster figures and fragrances." "Fifteen maids struggled to clean and take care of the relics." "And the indexing of relics huh?" "It has to be a section without emphasis." "Part of the crown of thorns" "A piece of wood from The True Cross, the slipper of The Virgin, a bonnet of St. Mary Magdalene." "He ordered supplies in the capital." "Bullets, kerosene, sewing needles, fabrics, coffee, sugar, rum, dried vegetables," "dried beef, flour and soap." "He sold, assisted by a primitive marketing team 1,420 barrels of chestnuts," "300 leopard skins, 30 monkeys," "and 600 parrots already knowing a few french words." "I go straight to the hot spots!" "His powers increased." "He believed that he could provoke flooding and the rupture of dykes." "Paralyzing his enemies, disabling them from eating or sleeping" "Sometimes he blocked their bowels, thereby impeding them from evacuating." "The power to bring together river banks for crossings and escapes." "The power of drying lagoons and rivers, whose waters'd retreat respectfully under his orders." "He had the power of giving human form to the trunks of trees, to please the fantasies of children." "And the power to freely change his sex, to please his own fantasy." "As the messiah of the Chaco he could describe scenes occurring several miles away, as if he was watching a movie." "He claimed to have captured Halley's comet and the drought of 1910 in a vase, so he'd release it at the right time." "to destroy the Christians." "His miracles were growing." "There were so many candidates that the proposals for salvation had to be referred in a sealed envelope." "He acquired rights:" "The right to steal, to rape." "The right of prey." "The inhabitants paid agricultural tributes in exchange for material and spiritual protection." "Alongside were served 30,000 daily soups." "But the Devil was not satisfied with certain excesses, inadmissible within their moral and legal standards." "And then the hostilities against Dr. Artur began." "Under the direction of a Franciscan with abscesses, intestinal worms and pustules on his face," "The 'Neophytes', catechumens from the mission near Abapa gave the first skirmishes against the troops of Dr. Arthur." "Result:" "80 pilgrims die beheaded by ax and 580 deserted." "On January the first" "The obscure St. Zataualpa receives sudden divine inspiration and shouts that Dr. Artur is nothing but a carnival king." "He establishes a mysterious brotherhood of vigilantes." "Then begins" "The Holy War of the Scorpion Zone." "Accompanied by 50 Gaúchos immunized against bullets," "He invades the hideout of the treasure accumulated by the Nogueira family and in a burst of xenophobia he captures and burns alive all the women and children." "Colonel João Pinto enters the war against his former partner, launching himself, an edition of the almanac, exposing Dr. Artur to ridiculous anecdotes and denouncing the illegal practice of witchcraft." "And this coincides with the great stock market crash in New York." "A climate of despair and demoralization." "Don Tomé de Alarcão, registrar of Calicut, measured Nogueira's zone of influence." "Rio Vermelho village:" "Isolated groups of archers killed the mayor while the shops are invaded by crazy chavs with knives and sticks." "São Pedro do Sabóia village:" "founded by Mendes Sá in 1558, plagued by smallpox." "People try to save the smuggling of Japanese electronics." "Santiago village:" "occupied by hungry cannibal Princes, who, in the absence of human flesh eat the forbidden turtle and have their livers explode." "Bom Jesus de Tataquara village:" "Depreciation of acrylic objects, illuminated signs, residential complexes in the jungle." "The poet mayor is electrocuted by his electric typewriter while writing a sonnet on the Paulo Afonso Falls." "Against Dr. Artur the blood cortege is made, leaving the convent of the barefoot." "The Viceroy went unshod with a rope around his neck and the lady Viceroy asking God for mercy." "His courtiers, with bones and bits in their mouths and daunting blood penitences." "The gentlemen and plebeians followed, with the clerks, their shaven heads covered with ashes, and robes of sackcloth and herbs." "For his part, Dr. Arthur makes the sacrifice of a loom whose ashes are spread by the wind to cause the dispersion of enemy gatherings." "In his mouth, a piece of rock crystal." "Malaria, tuberculosis and alcoholism raged in Santa Cruz." "On the last day he was caught explaining to Indian boys that in the Tower of Babel there were 72 languages while in the Babel of the Amazon River over 150 are already known." "He hung on a tree eating raw and disgusting meat, a dog's ear, snake's tail and slugs." "He cried... eyes so swollen that they looked like two breasts." "Robledo López, a mestizo sucks a feather from a bird from paradise and becomes invisible, managing to escape the area to bring information to the Earl of Ficalho and to the noble Marquis Don Luiz de Souza de Telo Menezes," "who tightens the enclosure." "Four old men I met in 1955 survivors of the Ivú region and who had been supporters of Dr. Arthur, tell that his wife, Grimanesa Le Petit, of whom the couple was the only stable reality, disguised by a mechanical head" "with beard, mustache and moving chin, invented by the famous Venetian Bustefanini, in a fit of jealousy, which had nothing to do with the struggles, killed her husband with 35 bullets to the head, a number which suggests that she was helped by others." "In February, in the middle of Carnival his corpse is revealed." "Lying in the cottages near to Matara." "Under a small layer of earth, the sad sudarium of a sheet is revealed, the body of the infamous and barbarous doctor." "It was hideous." "The head tormented with a crown, hands and feet with spikes the back with lash marks." "His hair was plucked, the skin abraded, veins ripped, and nerves stretched." "Bones disjointed, the blood, shed." "He was carefully unearthed, and then photographed." "They decided to cut and store his head, so many times damned." "They brought that skull to the coast for science to have the last word." "There, in the relief of his cerebral convolutions scientists have found the essential lines of Crime and Madness." "Subtitles: neither"