Brazilian cinema is undergoing a renaissance in cinematic style and theme and gaining increasing footage in the international market. One of the impressive things about this new cinema is its ability to make the complexities of contemporary Brazilian society available to both national and international audiences, while at the same time these films provide commentary on Brazilian cinema's history of representation.
This course on Brazilian documentary film rethinks how issues of documentation have configured Brazilian film traditions, such as Glauber Rocha's famous concept of the "aesthetics of hunger," social documentary, national allegory, comedy and social commentary.
Major topics and issues will include:
1. If 'a estética da fome'/’the aesthetics of hunger’ has become 'a cosmética da fome'/’the cosmetics of hunger’, how to document social reality in a consumer culture of reality-show aesthetics.
2. Documentary filmmaking. How have the aesthetics and intentions of documentary changed in these past 40 years to accommodate new social relations, questions of marginality, inclusion and exclusion.
3. Race and citizenship in new Brazilian cinema.
4. Cinema, TV Globo and representations of urban violence and rural mythologies.
5. How Northeastern and regional issues have entered mainstream, international market.
Discussion of films and texts will continually question film language, use of image, editing, point of view, etc. and one of the major points of the class is progressively gain an understanding of how film language counteracts or collaborates with social stereotypes (not only of non-Brazilians about Brazil, but also how this works internally with issues of region, class and race and sexual identity). Seminar discussions will center on the films and readings available on E-Reserve. All films have subtitles in English. Course centers on study of approximately 12 recent documentary films (1990s-present). Taught in Portuguese with readings in Portuguese and English, all films subtitled.
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