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, luard,
Max Ernst and Andr 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 Rosria do Oeste
and in the turbulent coffee region,
where, of 600 houses,
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. Joo 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. Joo 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 Mdicine 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 Joo 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. Joo de Laparilla Duque
author of
The Warnings of Mrs. Truth
Gaspar Barata de Mendona,
expert on rituals of mummification
Elesbo 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:
'Ober'
which means: 'Splendor'.
In his files and recorded tapes
he reviewed the history of
his precursors in the region.
A supposed So Laureno 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.
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.
in Xaxapias, Peru
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 Gusmo.
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.
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,
Dorotia de Gracia Tavarela D'almira,
author of the book:
Maxims of virtue and beauty
by which Difanes,
Criminia 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
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
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:
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 Gachos
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 Joo 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 Tom de Alarco,
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.
So Pedro do Sabia village:
founded by Mendes S 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 Lpez, 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 Iv 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
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.