Brazilian cinema in the neoliberal age (deadline: 15 january 2018)

The end of authoritarian regimes and the establishment of neoliberal democracies in Latin America, in the late 1980s and early 90s, gave rise to a cinematic renaissance in many countries of the region, notably Argentina, Mexico and Brazil. The reasons for this phenomenon (called ‘Retomada do Cinema Brasileiro’, in Brazil) were many, including the multiplication of film schools in Argentina; the privatisation of film production in México; the redistribution of the assets of the extinct governmental film production company Embrafilme through the Recovery Award (‘Prêmio Resgate do Cinema Brasileiro’) and the introduction of the Audiovisual Law in 1993, in Brazil (Dennison, Nagib and Shaw 2003). The negative effects of neoliberalism, in these and other countries, would soon be felt, the most serious of them being the widening of the gulf between social classes. Nevertheless, the climate of political freedom offered fertile ground for cinema’s creative and quantitative development. An immediate result in Brazil was the sudden increase from two feature-length films in 1992, under the brief but nefarious Collor government, to more than 200 between 1994 and 2000 (Nagib 2003), with national production stabilising on an average of 100 features per year thereafter. In 2016, a record of 143 feature-length films were produced in Brazil (source: Ancine). In a recent article in the British film magazine Sight and Sound, Robert Koehler (2007) recognises that Latin American cinema has finally ceased to be defined by periodical ‘cycles’ to become a new regional power in international filmmaking.

Numerical growth was accompanied by wide diversification. The axis Rio-São Paulo where production had historically concentrated was superseded by decentralisation and the establishment of strong production hubs in Rio Grande do Sul, Minas Gerais, Pernambuco, Ceará and other states. Recife, the capital of Pernambuco, became notable not only as a production and exportation hub, but also as the home of Brazilian cinema’s most recent cinematic sensation, Kléber Mendonça Filho, whose film Neighbouring Sounds offers a sweeping historical analysis of the city’s current property boom and its disastrous effects.

Today’s encouraging figures are a (somewhat ironical) reminder of the utopian euphoria that animated the early phase of Brazil’s cinematic revival, with films such as Central Station (Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas, 1988) and Perfumed Ball (Paulo Caldas and Lírio Ferreira, 1997), which show an attractive and colourful Northeast of Brazil in stark opposition to the arid and poverty-stricken backlands of Cinema Novo. As Nagib (2006) had pointed out, this utopian curve would soon collapse with the realisation that neoliberalism was incapable of combating, and even contributed to, the country’s structural problems, including the spread of favelas, drug trafficking and corruption, as portrayed in later landmarks such as City of God (Fernando Meirelles and Kátia Lund, 2002), The Trespasser (Beto Brant, 2002) and Elite Squad I and II (José Padilha, 2007; 2010).

At the same time, the drive to explore remote geographical confines resulted in a more complex national identity, open to globalisation and to a variety of genres such as the road movie (The Motorcycle Diaries, Walter Salles, 2004; I Travel Because I Have to, I Come Back Because I Love You, Karim Aïnouz and Marcelo Gomes, 2009). Moreover, a greater female participation in film directing contributed to the expansion of a field historically dominated by men, with inaugural films such as Carlota Joaquina (Carla Camuratti, 1995) and A Starry Sky (Tata Amaral, 1996). Since the Retomada, experimental ventures (Believe me, Bia Lessa and Dany Roland, 1996; Elena, Petra Costa 2012) have shared ground with comedies and blockbusters funded by Globo TV network, many turned into series (If I Were You, since 2006; My Mum Is a Character, since 2016).

Criticism on contemporary Brazilian cinema has been striving to understand these tendencies, having launched a host of important concepts and figurations, such as ‘cinema de novo’ (‘cinema anew’, a pun with ‘Cinema Novo’, by Luiz Zanin Oricchio), ‘the unexpected encounter and the resentful character’ (Ismail Xavier), ‘the cosmetics of hunger’ (Ivana Bentes), ‘violence as spectacle’ (Esther Hamburger), ‘common-place and language experience’ (César Guimarães), ‘the filmmaker’s bad consciousness’ (Fernão Ramos), ‘the search for the father’ (José Carlos Avellar) and the realist question in Brazilian cinema (Ramayana Lira, Erly Vieira Jr). Some critics still abide by the power of novelty, identifying a ‘Brand-new Brazilian Cinema’ formed by young filmmakers who turn their back on state-funding schemes for production and exhibition, engaging themselves instead in a ‘relationship of complicity between cinema and the world, between creativity and life’ (Marcelo Ikeda).

As the second decade of the twenty-first century nears its end, it is now time to re-assess these concepts, figures and diagnoses, with a view to understanding the ways in which cinema, against the backdrop of neoliberalism and its contradictions, has been shaping representations of political and economic upheavals, migration currents, urban life convulsions, the dissolution of identities, violence and resistance. Brazil’s political and economic trajectory in the new millennium, marked by a vertiginous boom and bust, requires an updated analysis. Thus, this special issue will endeavour to address the following question: how does Brazilian cinema reflect, confront and engage with this scenario of fluctuating political and economic tendencies, where contradictions generate new forms of oppression, but also of resistance?

Entitled Brazilian Cinema in the Neoliberal Era, this issue will attempt to map the role of cinema in the neoliberal context, exploring the ways in which economic politics interferes with the production order, affecting language, thematic choices, aesthetic expressions and political orientations. The aim is to evaluate how Brazilian cinema has been responding to the neoliberal project by partaking in or resisting to it.

We invite proposals of papers directly or indirectly concerned with the following subthemes:

• Traditions and ruptures in Brazilian political cinema

• The digital turn and Brazilian cinema after the Retomada

• Industrial and independent modes of filmmaking

• The multiplication of production centres

• New aesthetic trends under democracy

• Emergence, consolidation and demise of cinematic genres in Brazil

• Minorities and identity politics: gender, race and sexuality in twenty-first century production

• Canon formation in contemporary production: the ‘obligatory’ films

• Film criticism and curatorship in dialogue with film practice

• Cineclubs, cinephilia and forms of film consumption in Brazil in the twenty-first century

• Theoretical thought on Brazilian cinema

• Women’s filmmaking and authorship

Lúcia Nagib is Professor in Film at the University of Reading. She is the author of the books: World Cinema and the Ethics of Realism (Continuum, 2011), A Utopia no Cinema Brasileiro: Matrizes, Nostalgia, Distopias (Cosac Naify, 2006; English version: Brazil on Screen: Cinema Novo, New Cinema, Utopia, I.B. Tauris, 2007), O Cinema da Retomada: Depoimentos de 90 Cineasatas dos anos 90 (Editora 34, 2002), Nascido das Cinzas: Autor e Sujeito nos Filmes de Oshima (Edusp, 1995), Em Torno da Nouvelle Vague Japonesa (Editora da Unicamp, 1993) and Werner Herzog: O Cinema como Realidade (Estação Liberdade, 1991). She organized the books: Impure Cinema: Intermedial and Intercultural Approaches to Film (with Anne Jerslev, I.B. Tauris, 2013), Theorizing World Cinema (with Chris Perriam and Rajinder Dudrah, 2011), Realism and the Audiovisual Media (with Cecília Mello, Palgrave, 2009), The New Brazilian Cinema (I.B. Tauris, 2003), Mestre Mizoguchi (Navegar, 1990) and Ozu (Marco Zero, 1990).

Ramayana Lira de Sousa is Lecturer of Film and Literary Studies at Universidade do Sul de Santa Catarina, Brazil. She was a postdoctoral research fellow at University of Leeds and a Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence. She's co-edited three books and published articles and book chapters in Argentina, Brazil, U.S.A., England and Romania.

Alessandra Soares Brandão is a lecturer of Film Studies at Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (Brazil). She is the vice-president of the Brazilian Society for Film and Media Studies (Socine) and the editor-in-chief of ReBeCa (a Brazilian journal of film and audiovisual studies).