Books: Brazilian Cinema & TV

The recent international success of films such as Central Station and City of God has stimulated widespread interest in Brazilian film. This study provides insight into the Brazilian films that have most captured the imagination of domestic audiences over the years. This book focuses on individual films in their socio-historical context, drawing on extensive fieldwork in Brazil and Latin America. It argues that Brazilian cinema has almost always been grounded in intrinsically home-grown cultural forms dating back to the nineteenth century, including the Brazilian music hall, the traveling circus, radio shows, carnival, and, later, comedy television. Combining a chronological structure with new research and a lively approach, Popular cinema in Brazil is the ideal introduction to Brazilian cinema. --book description

The Carnival of Images: Brazilian Television Fiction

The Carnival of Images: Brazilian Television Fiction
by Michele Mattelart and Armand Mattelart

In creating and developing the new genre of the televised novela, a one-hour long dramatic serial, the Brazilian television industry grew, in less than 15 years, from an insignificant player in the international market to one of the largest, most influential in the world. The authors challenge accepted views of the world dominance of United States television and probe the socioeconomic impact of this new genre on a third world country. Using the telenovela and its impact on the medium world-wide, the authors document the important changes in the international circulation of television programs and in the way television is perceived theoretically as a subject of research. --book description

Johnson and Stam have compiled what is perhaps the definitive commentary on Brazilian cinema, offering thorough explications of the most important films from several different periods and styles. The book also discusses in detail tropicalism, anthropophagy, and other background elements that are integral to achieve an understanding of Brazilian cinema. Though some of the concepts may seem daunting, they are explained clearly and in a historical context, making it an excellent reference for students (either of Brazil or film in general). While some of the same articles appear in Cinema Novo X 5, Brazilian Cinema covers a wider range of subjects. If you are interested in Brazilian films, it is a must-read.--an Amazon reviewer

"Gender is an absolute ground zero for most human societies," writes David William Foster, "an absolute horizon of social subjectivity." In this book, he examines gender issues in thirteen Brazilian films made (with one exception) after the 1985 return to constitutional democracy and elimination of censorship to show how these issues arise from and comment on the sociohistorical reality of contemporary Brazilian society. Foster organizes his study around three broad themes: construction of masculinity, constructions of feminine and feminist identities, and same-sex positionings and social power. Within his discussions of individual films ranging from Jorge um brasileiro to A hora da estrela to Beijo no asfalto, he offers new ways of understanding national ideals and stereotypes, sexual dissidence (homoeroticism and transgenderism), heroic models, U.S./Brazilian relations, revolutionary struggle, and human rights violations. As the first study of Brazilian cinematic representations of gender ideology in English or Portuguese, this book will be important reading in film and cultural studies. --book description

L�cia Nagib here presents the first comprehensive critical survey of Brazilian film production since the mid-1990s, which has become known as the "Renaissance of Brazilian cinema". Besides reflecting on the conditions that made possible this recent boom, this book elaborates on the new aesthetic tendencies of recent productions, as well as their relationships to earlier traditions of Brazilian cinema. Internationally acclaimed films, such as Central Station, Seven Days in September and Orpheus, are analyzed alongside daringly experimental works, such as Chronically Unfeasible, Starry Sky and Perfumed Ball.

Former Playboy centerfold and soft-porn movie actress Xuxa (SHOO-sha) emerged in the 1980s as Brazil's mass media megastar. Through her children's television show, which reaches millions of people in Latin America and the United States, this blond sex symbol has attained extraordinary cultural authority. Reaching far beyond younger audiences, Xuxa's show informs the culture at large about gender relations, racial democracy, and idealized beauty. Backed by Brazil's TV Globo, the fourth-largest commercial network in the world, Xuxa has built an empire. Amelia Simpson's colorful portrayal is the first book to explore how Xuxa's representation of femininity, her privileging of a white ideal of beauty, and her promotional approach to culture perpetuate inequality on an unprecedented scale. Simpson's thoughtful analysis exposes the complicity of a mass audience eager to celebrate Xuxa's deeply compromised representations of gender, race, and modernity. --book description