Brazilian Cinema and the Aesthetics of Ruins - (World Cinema) by Guilherme Carréra (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Winner 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 progress and (under) development in the Brazilian nation.
Carréra invites the reader to walk amid the debris and reflect upon the strategies of spatial representation employed by the filmmakers. He addresses this body of films in relation to the legacies of Cinema Novo, Tropicália and Cinema Marginal, asking how these presentday films dialogue with or depart from previous traditions. Through this dialogue, he argues, the selected films challenge not only documentary-making conventions but also the country's official narrative.

Review Quotes

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 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.

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.

About the Author

Guilherme Carréra is a Brazilian film researcher and curator. He holds a PhD in Film awarded by the University of Westminster. His project was sponsored by the CAPES Foundation (Ministry of Education, Brazil).