vue - Agriculture In Brazil's Highlands, 1950s - Film 3484

Educational film about agriculture and industry in the highlands area of Brazil, covering coffee and cotton growing and iron ore mining in the 1950s. Map of South America. Ships in a port. View overlooking Rio from the base of the Christ the Redeemer statue. With the aid of a map, the location of Brazil, rainfall, regions within the country and population spread are explained by the narrator. The Great escarpment, view of the winding road network. Panning view of agricultural crops and farmland. People going about their day along a steep village street, a man pushes a barrow stall. Clearing of the forest with fire. Cattle grazing. Brief street view in a rural town in the Brazilian highlands. Very short clips of views in the bigger cities – Sao Paulo skyline, Rio with a large road heavy with traffic and Santos, street level view of smartly dressed women beside the port. A non specified city with pedestrians walking along the pavement. Close up views of people’s faces showing ethic diversity within Brazil. A wealthy family eat at the dinner table, where food is served by a maid in uniform. The head of the family is a wealthy farmer with coffee plantations. He visits his land holdings by plane, is met on arrival by a driver. View of coffee plantation. Workers are harvesting the beans, as the owner arrives by car. The owner talks to the workers. Tenant farmers harvesting coffee, the process is explained – the berries are picked, raked up and sifted to get rid of debris and leaves. The beans are bagged and the sacks loaded onto a six mule wagon which heads off along the dusty road. In a flat open area the coffee beans are emptied out of the sacks and spread across the ground for drying. Men rake over the beans for even drying. A small rural village, young person rides past on a horse. Women are collecting fire wood and baking bread in an outdoor oven. Women hang laundry on a washing line. A women with two small children takes lunch out to her family working in the coffee plantation. They all sit on the ground to eat. A father and son walk to the commissary shop to buy a sack of rice. The shop worker ladles rice into a sack and weigh it, entering the cost into the man’s account. Silhouette view of father and son as they walk home. The family leave their village home on foot, all dressed in their best clothes for church. They walk down a village street and into an open air market. View of people walking up the steps and into a large church, bells are tolling. Cotton harvesting, every member of a family are involved in picking cotton in the fields. Sacks of cotton are dragged to a waiting horse and cart. The cart is driven to a point where sacks are collated and put onto a large wagon or truck. The truck takes the load of cotton to the cotton gin, where many other truck loads are parked. The cotton sacks are unloaded, spot checked and they feed into the gin for cleaning. A clean cotton bale comes out of a baling machine and is manhandled before sliding down a ramp for the next part of its export journey. A steep sloping rock face. A negro man shouts. A plunger is pressed to detonate explosives. The rock face explodes and rocks tumble down the side. Mining iron ore. A small train pulls its cargo of iron ore to a processing plant. Steel foundry. View overlooking an industrial scene in Brazil. Housing blocks for steel workers in Volta Redona. A cargo train laden with steel cable. Sao Paulo industry. A factory. Brief shots of factory workers, a man spot welds, another stocks a furnace, one planes wood and a woman works at a loom. Wide angle view of a factory floor with many machines weaving cotton. Lengths of fabric coming off machines, spools of cotton. Workers clocking out at a machine, they get their time cards stamped. Panning high level view of the Sao Paulo skyline. Street level view with traffic and a trolley bus passing. 1950s floor polishers demonstrated for sale in a department store. A salesman hands a woman a blender. Rolls of fabric in the haberdashery department. Oranges being emptied in a large wagon or lorry. The port at Santos, cotton and coffee being loaded by crane onto a ship. Cargo ship leaving harbour.