THE VIEW FROM... INDUSTRY
era had already passed, and the military dictatorship had closed the country off from the world.” As Torres came of age during the seventies, Brazilian cinema was shaped by Embrafilme, a state-owned company created under the military government to support national production. “Iconic films such as Xica da Silva (1976) and Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands (1976) existed thanks to this subsidy, facing direct competition from American blockbusters,” Torres explains. “Cinema never truly flourished as an industry in Brazil, unlike television. The only film industry capable of sustaining itself through box office revenue was the pornochanchadas – Brazilian soft-core comedies. Many directors who dreamed of being Glauber Rocha but were faced with censorship found a way to survive in this niche, creating a genre known as pornochanchada cabeça, a mix of sex and anthropological thesis.” Torres’ own debut in Inocência (1983) stood apart from this trend, reflecting a moment when Brazilian cinema was still searching for identity under constraint. FAVELA FILMS With the return of democracy and the end of censorship in the mid eighties, Brazil’s audio-visual landscape began to change rapidly, opening up new space for filmmakers. Directors such as Jorge Furtado, Fernando Meirelles and Walter Salles emerged from this period of industrial expansion. Brazil’s society had become BRAZILIAN CINEMA HAS EXPERIENCED distinct historical phases ”
more urban, unequal and violent, and its cinema reflected this. Films such as Héctor Babenco’s Pixote (1980) and later Fernando Meirelles’ City of God (2002) appeared as defining works in what is known internationally as the favela film movement, named after the informal, precarious urban settlements in which they are set. At the same time, Torres notes how the tensions of Brazilian storytelling are shaped by inequality. “Brazil was the last country in the world to abolish slavery – a historical wound never resolved, reflected in our cinema,” she adds. “It is not possible in Brazil to film a drama based on bourgeois problems. It’s hard to take the trauma of someone going to a psychoanalyst seriously when millions of Brazilians lack basic sanitation.” Cinema mirrors its historical moment. “ I’m Still Here and The Secret Agent , the two Brazilian films that received awards
and international recognition in the past two years, emerged as responses to the rise of the far right in Brazil,” says Torres. “The idea that the dictatorship was not so harmful gained traction during the 2018 election. People held signs calling for the return of military rule at protests and demonstrations. It seemed history might be rewritten. “The films by Salles and Mendonça are aesthetically very different, but driven by the same need to recover a memory beginning to fade, reminding audiences what it truly means to live in a country that suspends its citizens’ civil rights.” POLITICAL INTERRUPTION Government policies have historically impacted the country’s cinema; Torres believes this will always be the case. “Brazilian cinema relied on Embrafilme until the nineties, a state entity rooted in the nationalist protectionism of the
IN THE SPOTLIGHT Karim Aïnouz (left), The Secret Agent by Kleber Mendonça (top left) and City of God by Fernando Meirelles & Kátia Lund (top right)
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