Brazilian Queer Cinema

Brazilian cinema is born out of a desire for modernity. Moving images (movies) represented the newest technological innovation. Cinematographers brought to the growing cities of Brazil an idea—and ideal—of “civilization” and contemporaneousness. At the same time, queer identities started to gain visibility. Therefore, a possible historiography of cinema is also a potential for a historiography of queer identities. Nonetheless, as a non-Anglo country and former colony of Portugal, Brazil presents its own vicissitudes both in the history of cinema and in queer historiography. To understand dissident identities in a peripherical culture (in relation to Europe), one must comprehend the ways ideas and concepts travel. Therefore, queer and intersectionality function as traveling theories (in Edward Said’s terms) for the understanding of a Brazilian queer cinema. A critical perspective of the term “queer” and its repercussions in other cultures where English is not the first language is imperative for one to understand groundbreaking filmmakers who have depicted queer realities and identities on the Brazilian big screen throughout the 20th century and the first decades of the 21st century.

Práticas de roteiro: conceitos revisitados

In ABC of Reading, Ezra Pound recalls the importance of listening to poets to understand poetry and to observe pictures (rather than books about pictures) to understand art history. We’ll talk about the screenplay. The premise is that used by Pound. To listen to screenwriters to understand poetry. To observe the screenplay to understand the history of cinematographic art. The study of the practice of different screenwriters of contemporary Brazilian cinema led us to review prevalent concepts in the bibliographies of this field. Among them, the concept of the screenplay itself. Other concepts revisited in this study are the concepts of narrative and spectator. The screenwriters whose practices contributed to this study are Anna Muylarte, Eliane Caffé, Karim Ainouz, Alê Abreu, Cão Guimarães and Leonardo Mouramateus. The analysis method consists of the mixed study of communicative practices and creative strategies, identified in the process records (screenplays, creation reports, and interviews), under the theoretical and methodological support of the Critical Theory of Creative Processes, as proposed by Cecília Almeida Salles. This research is also complemented by the concepts of continuity of mind, by Charles Sanders Peirce; of narrative as a creative process, by Paul Ricoeur.

Encontros, Festivais e Mostras - caminhos para construção do cinema negro brasileiro

The article seeks from the realization of the “Afro-Brazilian Cinema Moments Exhibition - Retrospective”, to analyze the process of consolidation of the concept of Black Cinema, and how the specific Encounters, Festivals and Exhibitions strengthened this process. Based on the questions about the image and the place of the black population in film production, we investigated the factors that led to the increase of production made by black filmmakers. In this way, we understand this process as a consequence of the racially defined public policies developed in recent decades, strengthened by the advance and access of new technological mechanisms and apparatuses of production; the establishment of the Association of Black Audiovisual Professionals (APAN); and also the outbreak of contemporary film festivals and shows, shaped around the racial issue in all regions of the country.

Sala Odeon: Contribuições para a História do Cinema na Amazônia - A recepção e a exibição cinematográficas no início do século XX

In this article, we present the results of the research that focused on the history of the Odeon amusement room, built in Belém do Pará, Brazil, at the beginning of the 20th century. In the light of reception studies, the research aimed to raise elements that allowed inferences about the profile of the public and the nature of the films exhibited during the 1910s, in the context of an Amazon city, which was experiencing economic and migratory impacts of the First Cycle of Rubber Exploitation (1850 to 1920). For the operationalization of the methodology of the studies, we visited the memories of the pioneer of Spanish cinema, Ramón de Baños Martínez, about his period in the capital of Pará, hired as a projectionist, camera operator and photographer. We also sought to gather information about Odeon's programming, in the pages of the newspaper O Estado do Pará, a periodical founded in 1911. Theoretical-methodological movement guided by Bernardet and Mascarello, regarding the need for research on the History of Brazilian Cinema to go beyond the field of film production. The investigation revealed, among other aspects, that even given the predominance of showing imported, European and North American films, the public was always eager for national and, above all, local productions, applauded after facing long lines and in late-night sessions. It also reveals the colossal audiences of pornographic films, exclusively for male audiences, sold as a miraculous elixir for the problems of sexuality.

Helena Ignez, an Incendiary Monster of Brazilian Cinema

Patrícia Mourão de Andrade offers an impassioned portrait of the actress and filmmaker Helena Ignez, a foundational figure in Brazilian filmmaking of the 1960s and 1970s. Long ignored by a national historiography blinded by its own patriarchal distortions, Ignez has only gained recognition in the last fifteen years for her contributions to Brazilian cinema. Moving behind the camera for the first time in 2005, Ignez has created a body of work that brings the anarchic spirit of the Cinema Marginal movement of the late 1960s to Brazilian cinema of the 2000s. This article offers a comprehensive survey and assessment of Ignez’s career, from her first film, O pátio (1959), directed by Glauber Rocha, who became her first husband, to her memorable performances of the 1960s, to her years of political exile, to her recent, late renaissance.

Chanchadas and intermediality

This audiovisual essay investigates the intermedial nature of Brazilian film comedies produced during the 1940s and 50s by exploring the musical numbers of Aviso aos navegantes (Calling All Sailors, Watson Macedo, 1950). Brazilian cinema of this period is a privileged arena of different media strategies. Its “mixed” style is informed by Hollywood cinema but also by the domestic influence of radio, Carnival, and by the local forms of comic staging of the teatro de revista (the Brazilian equivalent of music hall or vaudeville). Of particular interest in this regard are the chanchadas, a body of films made between the mid-1930s and the early 1960s, that presented musical performances intertwined with comic situations, slender narrative lines and strong connections with the world of Carnival. Our aim is to show how the relationships between the different forms of cultural production in 1950s Brazil can be identified in a specific chanchada, opening a dialogue between musical performances on stage, over the radio, at Carnival and on screen. The essay also examines similarities and differences between chanchadas and the Hollywood musical comedy tradition. One area explored is integration, both in the sense in which it is often used in film studies, to discuss the relationship between the numbers and the narrative, and in reflecting on whether the different elements which feed into the numbers of Aviso aos navegantes are seamlessly combined in the film. Despite the huge popular success of his films, Watson Macedo was considered by many as the most “Americanised” of the directors of that period, adhering less to the critical mechanisms of parody than was the case with his contemporaries. However, if we pay attention to Macedo’s musical numbers, it is evident that these performances are not imperfect copies of Hollywood originals, but have a logic of their own. This audiovisual essay complements Flávia Cesarino Costa’s other contribution to this issue of Alphaville, the article “Building an Integrated History of Musical Numbers in Brazilian Chanchadas”, by exploring related ideas in the context of a single film. As well as the interest of the video essay’s own exploration and argument, the pairing of essays—traditional and videographic—enables readers of this issue to pursue their thinking about chanchadas and intermediality with specific audiovisual material in front of them