The carnival of cultures that make up Bahian society is celebrated in this delightfully oddball film based on a novel by Jorge Amado, who collaborated in the screenplay. A Citizen Kane-like investigation of a folk hero produces a film-within-a-film about one Pedro Archanjo, janitor in a medical school, musician, dancer, prodigious lover, and, above all, radical anthropologist who promoted the social value of miscegenation based on the observed success of his own Afro-American culture of Bahia. Archanjo's Tent of Miracles is much like Nelson Pereira dos Santos's "tent"-his screen: "...a meeting place for black artists, craftsmen, musicians, white bohemians-in short, all deemed marginal by the town's status-obsessed elite. In his strength, dignity, subtle humor, and, above all, in the reciprocated tenderness he bears his community, Archanjo is a moving figure who evokes cultural integrity and intellectual power." (Robert Stam, Film Comment)