Circus, poetry, romance, music, radio, dramatic theatre, theatrical theatre, chantadas, cinema nouveau, television. It’s definitely not easy. If the Internet had come about while he was still alive, Grande Othello might have become influential.
Sebastião Bernardes de Souza Prata was a precocious and versatile artist, born in Uberlandia in 1915, who managed to adapt to many activities during the 78 years of his life. The 110th anniversary of his birth justifies his selection as a Person of Career at the Itau Cultural Foundation, in São Paulo, until March 8, 2026.
Grande Othello died during a period of great activity and great public appreciation. In 1993, he suffered a massive heart attack upon landing at Charles de Gaulle Airport in France. The actor traveled to the Three Continents Festival in Nantes, where he will be honored in a panel dedicated to blackness in cinema.
If major popular success came from the 1940s and 1950s, when he formed a star pair with Oscarito at the height of Brazilian cinema’s chanchadas, Othello gradually consolidated his role as a perpetual challenger to an exclusionary and racist cultural industry.
“The new generations don’t know him. We want to save his personality. Here we highlight his art and also his fighting spirit,” explains Galiana Brasil, director of the Center for Artistic and Curatorial Programming at Itau Cultural. “The great Othello did indeed discuss current issues. He, for example, denounced the differences in salaries between white and black actors.”
In his comedy duo with Oscarito in the cinema, their names shared a prominent place on feature film posters, but he received lower fees than his white partner. “We are bringing the issue of unions, the struggle for professionalism, to the forefront.”
Othello described Brazil’s vaunted racial democracy as a “fallacy” and reiterated that his success was individual and apart from strong discrimination in the country’s artistic circle. He was aware that he was the first black Brazilian artist to achieve fame in several creative fields, and he remained publicly alert to racial issues.
Among the 160 pieces in the occupation, many documents reveal resistance to Othello. One of his controversial clashes was with serial writer Gilberto Braga after he announced the end of theater. Othello answers: “Theater will end if television continues to show soap operas at night, thus preventing people from going out to the streets and going to the theater.”
“It will be interesting to show visitors this more ferocious, more political side of him,” Brazil says. It highlights Othello’s handwritten notes on display. “He kept many notebooks containing ideas, poems, drafts. Diaries,” he adds, showing one containing notes about Gilberto Gil’s telephone communications.
Created on the first floor of the Itau Cultural Building, this work was consulted by Deise de Brito and visually designed by Kleber Montanheiro, who was already responsible for the commission in other editions of the series, such as those honoring Laura Cardoso, Tonia Carrero and Lima Duarte.
In the case of Grande Othello, he had a lot of material to distribute in the space. “With theatre, music, film and television, his life became a journey through images from the last century.” The biography is impressive: 103 plays, more than a hundred films and 42 disc recordings.
With a central area showing a stylized Rio Square, the exhibition brings together photographs, texts, scores, photographs, letters, costumes used in the theater and other objects. Most of the materials are part of the Othello collection preserved since 2008 at the Funarte Documentation and Research Center in Rio de Janeiro. There is also material from the TV Cultura and TV Globo archives.
One of the most prominent things that has been equipped is a small cinema with old seats for anyone who wants to watch excerpts from his films. “In people’s imagination, cinema is the memory that is the strongest,” says Galiana Brasil.
The highlights of his films are clear. In addition to the Occupation website, which features more items and memorabilia from Othello that were left outside the physical space of the exhibition, there is another attraction for digital visits.
The foundation’s free streaming channel, Itaú Culture Play, helps supplement the artist’s portfolio. Related films from Othello’s career are available, such as “Carnaval Atlântida” (1952), a comedy in which he starred alongside his partner Oscarito and another legend of Brazilian cinema, José Lugui.
Another enjoyable feature, again with Oscarito, is “Matar ou Correr” (1954), a Western-inspired chantada that, starting with the title, is a play on the classic Western “Matar ou Morrer,” from 1952, with Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly.
The versatility of Othello can be seen in two dramas directed by Nelson Pereira dos Santos: “Rio Zona Norte” (1957), with Jesse Valadao, Paolo Goulart and the singer Angela María, and “Gobiaba” (1987), alongside Betty Faria.
Part of the program is “Also Somos Irmaos” (1949), by José Carlos Perl, with Jorge Doria and Ruth de Souza, the actress who was Othello’s constant partner in championing the causes of blackness, and the police officer “Lúcio Flávio, o Passageiro da Agonia” (1977), a huge box office success directed by Hector Babenco.
But the exhibition would not be complete without “Maconaima”, an iconic classic of Brazilian cinema, directed by Joaquim Pedro de Andrade in 1969. In the creative and critically acclaimed version of Mario de Andrade’s book, Othello shares the character of the novel’s protagonist, the “characterless Brazilian”, with Paulo José.
Curious: In the small cinema built under the occupation, among the film excerpts on display are some scenes from “Carnival no Fogo,” a 1949 film directed by Watson Macedo. In an episode that could be a play on the film’s title, the film reels were burned in the fire, leaving only the excerpt to be shown there. Cinematic remains.