fredericofreitas

Rivers and Whirlpools

December 5, 2011 by fredericofreitas

Rivers and Whirlpools: a spatial and historical interpretation of La Vorágine The initial scene of the 1972 film, Aguirre, the Wrath of Good, depicts a sixteenth-century expedition descending from the Andeans highlands into the Amazonian lowlands. The expedition led by Francisco Pizarro is in search of the mythical city of El Dorado. The movie, directed by Werner Herzog, is a hodge-podge of different exploratory travels of sixteenth-century conquistadores, from Francisco de Orellana’s upriver Amazonian voyage to Lope de Aguirre’s downriver […]

Categories: History • Tags: Amazon, Brazil, Colombia, Eustasio Rivera, History, La Vorágine, Literature, Spatial History, The Vortex

Land Use and Deforestation in Southeastern Brazil — 1753-1840

November 18, 2011 by fredericofreitas

Land Use and Deforestation in Southeastern Brazil — 1753-1840[1] This article analyzes the pressure of farming on tropical forests in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Brazil. Making use of GIS technology, it was possible to create a map for the South Central of the Minas Gerais province and geocode historical data for agriculture and livestock production. We have found an association between corn and swine production in areas of forest, and we suggest a correlation of the practices of slash-and-burn agriculture, pig […]

Categories: History • Tags: 18 Century, 19th Century, Deforestation, History, Land Use, Minas Gerais

The Plays of França Júnior

August 30, 2011 by fredericofreitas

The Plays of França Júnior is an interactive visualization showing the social network formed by the characters in the plays of Brazilian nineteenth-century playwright França Júnior. This visualization is part of a larger research project on social networks in Brazilian literature led by Zephyr Frank at Stanford University’s Spatial History Project. See the interactive visualization here. It is plain, then, that there is an intention to encapsulate a representative type of the Brazilian ruling class, through relationships peculiar to him […]

Categories: History • Tags: 19th Century, Brazil, Drama, França Júnior, History, Network Analysis, Rio de Janeiro, Visualization

The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas

August 1, 2011 by fredericofreitas

Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas / The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas is an animation showing the social network formed by the characters in the Machado de Assis‘s nineteenth-century Brazilian novel. This visualization is part of a larger research project on social networks in Brazilian literature led by Zephyr Frank at Stanford University’s Spatial History Project. In this narrated visualization, the characters in Machado de Assis’s masterpiece are presented in the space of social […]

Categories: History • Tags: 19th Century, Bras Cubas, Brazil, History, Literature, Machado de Assis, Network Analysis, Rio de Janeiro

The South Atlantic Columbian Exchange

May 31, 2011 by fredericofreitas

The South Atlantic Columbian Exchange In his classic 1972 book, The Columbian Exchange, Alfred W. Crosby Jr. assesses the biological and cultural consequences of the introduction of new species into transatlantic environments. From 1492 on, different species of animals, plants, viruses and bacteria were exchanged between the Old and New Worlds following their human symbiotic companions. The consequences of these exchanges for human history were manifold — from the decimation of the majority of Americas’ indigenous population by Old-World germs […]

Categories: History • Tags: Africa, Brazil, Columbian Exchange, History

Perspectivism and the Decolonization of the Subject

March 13, 2011 by fredericofreitas

Perspectivism and the Decolonization of the Subject The more the colonized has assimilated the cultural values of the metropolis, the more he will have escaped the bush. — Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks[1] To understand the terms of the colonial difference established in the last 500 hundred years between colonizer and colonized it is necessary to disassemble the ideas of man and humanity that have been at the center of the European thought since the Renaissance. Walter Mignolo is […]

Categories: History • Tags: Deleuze, History, Leibniz, Perspectivism, Postcolonialism, Species, Viveiros de Castro

Sutil Theatre Company

January 10, 2010 by fredericofreitas

These are posters I designed for the Brazilian theatre company Sutil Cia.

Categories: Graphic Design • Tags: Brazil, Drama, Graphic Design, Theater

Eu, o Vinil, e o Resto do Mundo

November 15, 2009 by fredericofreitas

Eu, o Vinil, e o Resto do Mundo (I, the Vinyl LP, and the Rest of the World) I wrote, produced, and animated along with Ricardo Fernandes the opening for this 2010 documentary about hip-hop DJs in São Paulo. It was directed by Karina Ades and Lila Rodrigues.

Categories: Animation • Tags: Animation, Hip-Hop, São Paulo

Amor?

September 8, 2009 by fredericofreitas

Film prospectus for 2011 Brazilian feature film Amor?, directed by João Jardim. (2009)

Categories: Graphic Design • Tags: Film, Graphic Design

Frederico Freitas

Historian of Latin America

Author Archives: fredericofreitas