Towards an Intermedial History of Brazilian Cinema

Abstract

Presents a new history of Brazilian Cinema, based on its dialogue with other arts and media Launches an entirely new historiographic method, drawing on intermediality in order to reconstruct the history of a national cinema Unveils the multimedia and polymathic wealth behind the various historical periods in Brazilian cinema Provides an overarching historical coverage of Brazilian cinema, through an innovative approach that connects different periods in Brazilian film history through the multiple art and media forms interwoven in them Proposes that different phases of a national cinema can be framed as comparable and interrelated phenomena, rather than relying on evolutionary chronologies and classical-modern or centre-periphery models Explores new ways of understanding Brazilian film history, and the history of cinema in general From its inception, Brazilian cinema has combined extra-filmic artistic and cultural forms, both local and imported, resulting in an original aesthetic blend. Theatre, dance, music, circus, radio, television and the plastic arts left a distinctive mark on Brazilian cinema’s poetics and politics, as can be observed in a host of fascinating phenomena analysed in this book, including: the film prologues that connected the screen to the stage in the 1920s; the chanchada musical comedies, inflected by vaudeville theatre and the radio; the manguebeat and árido movie movements that blurred the boundaries between music and film; and contemporary multimedia installations and other experiments. By adopting intermediality as a historiographic method, this book reconstructs the history and cultural wealth behind filmic expressions in Brazilian cinema.