Filmmaker José Mojica Marins, known as Zé do Caixão and author of more than 40 films, died at the age of 83 in São Paulo this Wednesday (19), due to bronchopneumonia.
Mojica, born on a Friday, March 13, 1936, taught himself how to make films.
His father, who ran a cinema in Vila Anastácio, west of São Paulo, gave him a camera for his birthday and young José made a series of shorts with the boys in the neighborhood. His first studio, at the turn of the 1940s to the 1950s, was in an improvised chicken coop.
In 1964, he released his most successful film, "At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul", about a country grave digger who despised people of faith, ate meat on Good Friday, and terrified the city in search of a woman who would give him a perfect child.
In the 1990s, Mojica cinema lovers discovered his work in the United States, through the release of several works by a terror distributor.
There, he became known as Coffin Joe. Horror film critic Joe Kane chose Zé do Caixão as "the greatest discovery of its kind in the 90s" in his guide "The Phantom of the Movies' Videoscope ", released in 2000.
Translated by Kiratiana Freelon