Description
Book SynopsisWinner of the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies (BAFTSS) 2023 Award for Best First Monograph. Winner of the Association of Moving Image Researchers (AIM) 2022 Award for Best Monograph.Guilherme Carréra's compelling book examines imagery of ruins in contemporary Brazilian cinema and considers these representations in the context of Brazilian society. Carréra analyses three groups of unconventional documentaries focused on distinct geographies: 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, these powerful films articulate critiques of the notions of progres
Trade ReviewThis is an intriguing walk amidst Brazilian ruins, from the outskirts of the capital to a Jesuit building in an indigenous area. By looking at those testimonies of underdevelopment, the author unfolds an extraordinary series of Brazilian singularities, but also illuminates our past, present and future in a neoliberal world. -- Albert Elduque Busquets, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain
Brazilian Cinema and the Aesthetics of Ruins is useful to readers with a knowledge of World Cinema as well as to those who are less familiar with core Brazilian cinematic traditions and how they have sought to engage with problems of social inequality, poverty, and underdevelopment. Carréra’s dense, historically situated and in-depth examination of Brazilian social documentary films thus offers a more contemporary assessment of Brazilian filmmaking and sits alongside other English language books in the field. … [It] is a solid, well-researched, and developed book that will be very useful for students and scholars alike in disciplines from Film Studies to Brazilian and Latin American Studies, Politics, and Media and Communications. * Volupté *
This timely addition to existing scholarship in English on Brazilian cinema provides an original and persuasive argument for situating contemporary production within a wider aesthetics of ruin and decay. Both accessible and academically rigorous, this volume will appeal to students and established scholars alike. -- Lisa Shaw, University of Liverpool, UK
A densely synthetic and eminently readable capsule overview of Brazilian Cinema filtered through the imagistic-theoretical grid of “ruins” as a metaphor both for artistic creativity and social devastation. After the celebrated aesthetics of poverty, hunger, and garbage, the book offers a multi-faceted aesthetics of ruination, all in relation to larger themes of indigeneity and modernity. -- Robert Stam, New York University, USA
Table of ContentsFigures Acknowledgements Introduction: In search of Brazilian ruins Part One Framing the ruins: From Cinema Novo to contemporary Brazilian documentary 1: A realm for the ruins of Brazil 2: Cinema Novo: A country in crisis 3: Documentary in the wake of Cinema da Retomada Part Two The other side of progress: Cinematic (re)constructions of Brasilia 4: A controversial spatiality: Myth and apartheid 5:
Realism under erasure or not quite: New imagery and storytelling 6:
The Age of Stone : The uchronic mode of a monument 7:
White Out, Black In : Exploding the Third World from a
laje point of view Part Three Constructing ruins in Rio de Janeiro: An intermedial visualization of failing projects 8: Tropicalia: An intermedial counterculture 9: The rubble as the legacy: A ruin for the World Cup and the Olympics 10: The Carmen Miranda ruinous spaceship in
Tropical Curse 11: A lame-leg architecture: Half-hospital, half-ruin in
H U Enigma Part Four The long-standing ruination: Indigenous territory in dispute 12: Setting the ground: Cinema Novo and indigenous representation 13: The Video nas Aldeias case: For an indigenous media to emerge 14: ‘Here, in this scenario of destruction …’: Territory of ruins in
Corumbiara 15: Made of stone and ruins: Indigenous filmmaking in
Tava, The House of Stone,
Two Villages, One Path and
Guarani Exile Conclusion: A walk amid the cinematic ruins Notes References Filmography Index
