A Century Of Brazilian Documentary Film

The first comprehensive study of Brazilian documentary filmmaking, offering a sweeping look at more than a century of cinematic journalism, propaganda, and artistry.

Since the late nineteenth century, Brazilians have turned to documentaries to explain their country to themselves and to the world. In a magisterial history covering one hundred years of cinema, Darlene J. Sadlier identifies Brazilians’ unique contributions to a diverse genre while exploring how that genre has, in turn, contributed to the making and remaking of Brazil. A Century of Brazilian Documentary Film is a comprehensive tour of feature and short films that have charted the social and political story of modern Brazil. The Amazon appears repeatedly and vividly. Sometimes—as in a prize-winning 1922 feature—the rainforest is a galvanizing site of national pride; at other times, the Amazon has been a focus for land-reform and Indigenous-rights activists. Other key documentary themes include Brazil’s swings from democracy to dictatorship, tensions between cosmopolitanism and rurality, and shifting attitudes toward race and gender. Sadlier also provides critical perspectives on aesthetics and media technology, exploring how documentaries inspired dramatic depictions of poverty and migration in the country’s Northeast and examining Brazilians’ participation in streaming platforms that have suddenly democratized filmmaking.

"Like Brazilian society, documentary filmmaking is undergoing transformation, becoming an increasingly inclusive and diverse field, intervening in the ongoing struggle for social justice and equal distribution of power. As the first English-language monograph to focus on this body of work, this book examines the ways in which contemporary documentaries explore the borders between centers and margins, visibilities and invisibilities, silences and speech, and forms of authority and their contestation. Centered on an eclectic cluster of documentaries -from ethnographic documentaries and indigenous videos to films concerned with social and criminal justice, including first-person, essayistic films - this book brings into view the transformations of both Brazilian society and filmmaking, ultimately examining the genre's preoccupation with archival content"--

From the documentary to the cinema novo and cannibalism, from Nelson Pereira dos Santos's Vidas Secas to music in the films of Glauber Rocha, this third, revised edition is a century-spanning introduction to the story of a medium that flourished in one of the most developed of 'underdeveloped' nations.

At most recent count, there are no fewer than forty-five women in Brazil directing or codirecting feature-length fiction or documentary films. In the early 1990s, women filmmakers in Brazil were credited for being at the forefront of the rebirth of filmmaking, or retomada, after the abolition of the state film agency and subsequent standstill of film production. Despite their numbers and success, films by Brazilian women directors are generally absent from discussions of Latin American film and published scholarly works. Filling this void, Brazilian Women's Filmmaking focuses on women's film production in Brazil from the mid-1970s to the current era. Leslie L. Marsh explains how women's filmmaking contributed to the reformulation of sexual, cultural, and political citizenship during Brazil's fight for the return and expansion of civil rights during the 1970s and 1980s and the recent questioning of the quality of democracy in the 1990s and 2000s. She interprets key films by Ana Carolina and Tizuka Yamasaki, documentaries with social themes, and independent videos supported by archival research and extensive interviews with Brazilian women filmmakers. Despite changes in production contexts, recent Brazilian women's films have furthered feminist debates regarding citizenship while raising concerns about the quality of the emergent democracy. Brazilian Women's Filmmaking offers a unique view of how women's audiovisual production has intersected with the reconfigurations of gender and female sexuality put forth by the women's movements in Brazil and continuing demands for greater social, cultural, and political inclusion.

"Guilherme Carrera's compelling book examines imagery of ruins in contemporary Brazilian documentary film-making and considers these representations in the context of Brazilian society. Carrera groups these films into three distinct types: firstly, unconventional documentaries focused on Brasília - The Age of Stone (2013) and White Out, Black In (2014)); Rio de Janeiro - ExPerimetral (2016), The Harbour (2013), Tropical Curse (2016), and HU Enigma (2011)); and indigenous territories - Corumbiara: They Shoot Indians, Don't They? (2009), Tava, The House of Stone (2012), Two Villages, One Path (2008), and Guarani Exile (2011)). In portraying ruinscapes in different ways, the book argues that these unconventional films articulate critiques of the notions of progress and (under)development in the Brazilian nation. Carrera's study invites the reader to walk amid the documentary debris and reflect upon the strategies of spatial representation employed by the films' directors. It addresses this body of contemporary films in relation to the legacies of Cinema Novo, Tropicália and Cinema Marginal, asking how these present-day films dialogue with or depart from previous traditions. Through this dialogue, he argues, the selected films challenge not only documentary-making conventions but also the country's official narrative"--

This volume examines some of the ways that Brazil has been represented and seeks to represent itself in popular media. It looks at social inequalities, racial divisions, and legacies of political restructuring as it illuminates the challenges and opportunities that the nation faces at present and going into preparations for and recovery from the upcoming mega events, both the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Summer Olympics. Drawing on the expertise of scholars in the fields of film and media studies, political science, social movement analysis, and cultural studies this volume features chapters examining the role of stereotyped Brazilian identity and myths of what it means to be Brazilian, the growing interest in favela—slum—culture, and sites of resistance in contemporary Brazilian society.

This volume examines Brazilian films released between 1995 and 2010, with special attention to issues of race, ethnicity and national identity. Focusing on the idea of the nation as an 'imagined community', the author discuss the various ways in which dominant ideas about brasilidade (Brazilian national consciousness) are dramatised, supported or attacked in contemporary fiction and documentary films.