Rogério Duarte (1939–2016) was a Brazilian graphic designer, typographer, musician and poet. He saw himself as a popular avant-garde artist, both the tribune of Brazilian underground in film, music and painting and a folk artist. As a contemporary and companion of Glauber Rocha, Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso he helped found the Tropicalism movement in the 1960s, though he later turned heretic because he refused to forgive the movement’s commercial sell-out.

José Walter Lima’s film portrait is an admiring homage to a natural born independent who practiced his art out of a deep, almost cosmic-religious attitude to life and the world. At one point the director elicits this credo from his protagonist: “Art is not a profession. Art is an approach. It is a way for you to approach things.”

Ralph Eue