Humberto Mauro is the first major figure of Brazilian cinema and its first auteur. In 1963, while his fiction films had fallen into oblivion, Mauro was the only film-maker, together with Mario Peixoto, to find favour with Glauber Rocha who considered him as the father of cinema novo.

The Cataguases cycle

Humberto Mauro was born in 1897 in Minais Geiras. He made his first film, Valadião o Cratera, in 1925 in the small town of Catagueses with a 9.5mm camera. This was going to be the beginning of a local production "cycle" which other regions of Brazil also enjoyed at the time. Over the next four years, Mauro shot four feature films which became increasingly acclaimed and seen. They show the influence of the great American masters of the time (Griffith and Vidor) mixed with a lyrical vision of Mauro's native region.

Rio and the talkies

From 1930, he went on to make films in Rio de Janeiro, including Ganga Bruta in which a man who killed out of love finds refuge in the countryside. The film got a poor reception because of its dissonant and expressionist touch. For his debut in talking films, Mauro was reunited with actress Carmen Santos who had worked with him on Sangre Mineiro in Cataguases. He made three films with her.

Documentaries

In 1936, Humberto Mauro was appointed head of the recently created INCE (National Institute for Educational Cinema) where he kept working until his retirement in 1964. There he produced and/or directed 357 short and medium-length documentaries, as well as a few fiction films including an animation film, O Dragãozinho Mansão, in 1942.

Handing over to the next generation

He soon supported young film-makers such as Perreira dos Santos for his first film in 1955. Tow of these film-makers, Alex Viany and David Neves, each made a documentary on Humberto Mauro.