In this vivid pastiche of images, music and text, Santos addresses technology and image-making in the context of cultural formation. Writes Santos: "Technology is explored in terms of information speed — a feature that makes popular absorption and understanding all the harder. Metaphorically, this process is akin to obtaining information through the ultra-condensation of mere legends and subtitles. Though this may occur in developed countries, such a process displays and unleashes its greatest vigor in a culture such as Brazil's. I Cannot Go to Africa Because I Am on Duty indirectly touches upon values: instead of being concerned with the information-absorption process and with the likelihood of controlling the image-producing process, we are hellbent on running a race, whose sole goal is to employ the latest technological innovation in terms of image production."
Three Jolly Fellows tells of the adventures of three small men in a world that borders on the fantastic: the composed and close-to-nature Mossbeard, the irritable city dweller Halfshoe, and the sensitive poet Muff.
Andreas, who is ten, has been brought up by his grandmother. When she dies, he removes a putto from the crucifix placed upon her, puts it in his mouth and does not speak again.
Clarence Flamer hosts a late-night talk show on regional radio station North Star Sound. A phone call he takes one night leads to his discovering a mortgage scam being run by a group of estate agents.
As he gradually turns mad, the dancer Nijinsky evokes the important episodes of his life. In costumes and sets of lush beauty, the divine puppet performs in a final show where the secondary characters are named: Diaghilev, Isadora Duncan, Stravinsky, Auguste Rodin, Léon Bakst.
On a West German Autobahn, Robert plummets from a bridge and is hospitalized. As he recovers, he flashes back to a Bulgarian holiday where he met Jutta and her uncle Lothar, who’d ordered a West German passport to smuggle her out of the DDR.
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