application/pdf
2036-461X
16226
31
en
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal
Ph.D. Thesis Project - The Intellectual and Political Context of Brazilian Cinema Novo
Text.Serial.Journal
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie
19
Projects & Abstracts
2018-10-01
2021-09-03
2018-10-01
2024-02-14
Cinéma & Cie
Lilia Lustosa de Oliveira
2018/10/01
Université de Lausanne
2036-461X
31
en
Ph.D. Thesis Project - The Intellectual and Political Context of Brazilian Cinema Novo
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie/article/download/16226/16947
19
The Intellectual and Political Context of Brazilian Cinema Novo
Lilia Lustosa de Oliveira / Ph.D. Thesis Project1
Université de Lausanne




   In the midst of the Cold War, a great many national cinemas — the majority of
them in the shadow of the Hollywood industry — rebelled against the American
aesthetic and economic model that was hindering the emergence of their own.
In the countries of the socialist bloc, filmmakers rejected the dogma of socialist
realism imposed in the Stalinist era and rediscovered the dynamism of 1920s
Avant-gardes as well as Italian neorealism.
   In Brazil, a former colony of Portugal, Cinema Novo was the name given to
the equivalent movement. It emerged in the beginning of the 1960s during the
presidency of Juscelino Kubitschek — known for his development policies and
the construction of the new capital, Brasília. Cinema Novo defended the idea of a
truly Brazilian cinema: decolonized, free from Hollywood’s influences and from
the imposition of (national or international) film industries. Inspired by similar
European movements, the young Brazilian filmmakers — the cinemanovistas —
fought for the freedom to create their own cinema, with their own aesthetics,
telling their own stories, with their own resources, even if that meant producing
‘poor’ and ‘ugly’ films, as some critics would say.
   Today recognized as Brazil’s most important cinematic movement, Cinema
Novo was also responsible for introducing Brazilian cinematography in the
history of world cinema, in the context of new wave movements.
   However, in order to achieve this status, future cinemanovistas had to walk
a long path to see their dream of cultural decolonization legitimized both
inside and outside Brazil. At that time, North American studios dominated the
Brazilian film industry, especially with regard to distribution. The majority of
the films screened in Brazilian theatres came from United States, and very few
were national productions. Moreover, at the end of the 1950s and beginning of
the 1960s, there were no formal film schools in Brazil and very little equipment
was available for those who wanted to stay out of the studios system. Young
filmmakers therefore had to learn alone, accepting the risks of shooting with old
cameras, no lighting equipment, no dollies, no cranes, no Nagras. Their only help



1
 Ph.D. Thesis supervised by Professor François Albera. For more information: lilia.oliveira@unil.
ch

                                                        Cinéma & Cie, vol. XIX, no. 31, Fall 2018
                                  Lilia Lustosa de Oliveira


came from cine-club sessions and classes organized by art museums or churches,
where the filmmakers were exposed to new techniques and trends.
   After the release of Rio, 40 Graus (1955), directed by Nelson Pereira dos
Santos — a low-budget production with neorealist traits, shot in the favelas of
Rio de Janeiro with non-professional actors (including favela residents) — those
future filmmakers began to believe that it was possible to produce quality films
outside the film industry. More importantly, they also recognized the need to
unite and organize as a movement, in order to declare their independence from
the national and international film industries.
   A first step was, of course, to make cinema: good films, or at least, those capable
of being legitimized as such by the Brazilian intelligentsia in the beginning of
the 1960s. Soon, the aspiring cinemanovistas realized that the best strategy to
reach intellectuals from Brazil was to have their movement first legitimized by
the Europeans, since the Brazilian cultural elite was still very much ‘colonized’
— as stressed by the critic Paulo Emilio Sales Gomes in the article ‘Uma situação
colonial?’, in 1960.2 In this way, the Old Continent would be able to raise global
awareness that Brazil was capable of producing its own films.
   How did this happen? Which steps did the cinemanovistas take in order
to have their movement legitimized by the ‘first world’ intelligentsia, and
subsequently by the Brazilian one, in very early 1960s? How did they organize,
and who helped them?
   Even though nowadays there is a plenitude of research and books on Cinema
Novo, facilitating the work of scholars interested in its films and its filmmakers,
there are still some doubts, questions and conflicting information regarding the
formation of this cinematic movement, its films and its chronological boundaries.
   In almost all the literature about the history of Brazilian cinema to date, two
short films are identified as the precursors of Cinema Novo: Aruanda (1960),
directed by Linduarte Noronha, and Arraial do Cabo (1959), directed by Mario
Carneiro and Paulo Cezar Saraceni. Some texts also cite Couro de Gato (1961)
and/or two other short films, directed by Joaquim Pedro de Andrade: O Poeta
do Castelo (1959) and O Mestre de Apipucos (1959). However, entering into the
detail of the period when Cinema Novo was being generated, one realizes that
there is a great amount of information still missing in this puzzle.
   How did an ethnographical film such as Arraial do Cabo — produced with very
low budget from the National Museum, directed by two amateurs — manage
to travel around Europe, participating and earning prizes in some of its most
important festivals? And what about the trajectory of Aruanda, a film produced
with very little equipment by amateurs from a poor State of the Northeast of
Brazil, with apparently no tradition on filmmaking? How did this documentary
become the model, the reference for new Brazilian cinema, as stated by the critic


2
 Paulo Emilio Sales Gomes, ‘Uma situação colonial?’, O Estado de S. Paulo, 19 November 1960,
p. 5.

156
               The Intellectual and Political Context of Brazilian Cinema Novo


Jean-Claude Bernardet in a 1961 article in O Estado de S. Paulo,3 one of the most
important newspapers of the country? And, finally, why did Glauber Rocha, one
of the main ‘actors’ of the future Cinema Novo, wait for the return of Arraial do
Cabo to Brazil in order to finally launch the movement?4
   The hypothesis defended in this thesis is that at the very beginning of the
1960s, thanks to actions that were half planned and half driven by the courage
and willpower of some filmmakers and critics, there were two major circuits of
Brazilian short films, within and outside the country. Together these enabled
the construction of the discourses that enabled the legitimation of Cinema
Novo. These two parallel and simultaneous movements were born at the same
time but moved apart, each following its own path until they finally met in
1961, at the São Paulo Art Biennal. On that occasion they united under the
name of Cinema Novo.
   In order to prove this hypothesis, the thesis employs a traceability approach
and methodology as an attempt to follow all the steps taken by Aruanda and
Arraial do Cabo (1959), from their pre-production in late 1950s until their
exhibition in the São Paulo Art Biennal in 1961. However, given that history
cannot be understood as isolated in time and disconnected from what comes
before and after, this study will move back and forward historically where
necessary, focusing on the period of 1959-1961 — which here is labelled Cinema
Novo’s ‘pregnant moment’, as a metaphor of Lessing’s concept. I also analyse the
circulation of the three films by Andrade mentioned above, though they are not
the main focus of this research project.




3
 Jean-Claude Bernardet, ‘Dois documentários’, O Estado de S. Paulo, 12 August 1961, p. 5.
4
 Glauber Rocha, ‘Documentários: Arraial do Cabo e Aruanda’, Jornal do Brasil, 6 August 1961,
p. 4.

                                                                                        157
