Legião Urbana — Angra dos Reis (clipe original)

JUL 01 1988 · 12:00

Legião Urbana — Angra dos Reis (clipe original) (1988) Director: Jodele Larcher Era: Brazilian Rock Renaissance (1987–1988) - Peak of the 'Rock de Brasília' movement; post-redemocratization youth culture, ecological anxiety, and the shadow of Chernobyl converge in late-VHS-era Brazilian MTV/TV Globo clip production. Exceptionally high. This is a primary audiovisual document of the 'Rock de Brasília' movement at its commercial and artistic peak, directed by one of Brazil's pioneering music video directors. Its ecological-political subject matter, documentary aesthetic grammar, unprecedented broadcast platform debut, and intimate portraiture of one of Brazil's most canonized bands make it irreplaceable for archives of Brazilian popular music, Latin American youth culture, and the global history of anti-nuclear protest media. Context: Produced at the apex of the 'Rock de Brasília' movement and released as a single in May 1988 — barely a year after the Chernobyl disaster (April 1986) and the Goiânia radiological accident (September 1987) — 'Angra dos Reis' is one of the most explicitly ecological artifacts of Brazilian rock. Renato Russo was a vocal opponent of the construction of the Central Nuclear Almirante Álvaro Alberto in the eponymous coastal city. The video's documentary grammar — bands members simply inhabiting the space around the plant — stages a quiet act of witness rather than protest spectacle, fully in keeping with post-punk's anti-commercial aesthetics. Its broadcast premiere on TV Globo's Fantástico placed it in front of one of the largest television audiences in Latin America, amplifying its ecological message through the most mainstream channel available. The video is a document of Brazilian redemocratization cultural politics and the generation that came of age under military dictatorship and emerged into uncertain democratic modernity. Director notes: According to the Portuguese Wikipedia article on the song, the 'Angra dos Reis' music video was directed by Jodele Larcher and premiered on April 17, 1988, on TV Globo's flagship entertainment program Fantástico. The video was produced in the context of the single's release as the second promotional single from the album 'Que País É Este 1978/1987' (EMI, 1987). The clip employed a split-location documentary approach, with the majority of footage shot on-location in the coastal city of Angra dos Reis, Rio de Janeiro state, in close proximity to the Central Nuclear Almirante Álvaro Alberto nuclear power plant — the explicit subject of Renato Russo's lyrics. One member's footage was shot separately in Rio de Janeiro due to a personal circumstance. The video closes with a TV broadcast sequence featuring a female voice-over making an official-sounding reassurance about the nuclear plant, creating an ironic and unsettling counterpoint to the ballad's text. The Rate Your Music release credits list Jorge Davidson as 'artistic director' in his capacity as EMI label A&R director, not as video director.