ABSTRACT
Brazil is configured along the lines of most world cinema cultures in that its film industry is “shaped by multiple economic, ideological, social and cultural exigencies that are compounded by US domination of the local film market and the consequent need for diverse forms of state support” (Johnson 2005: 14). It has likewise experienced the peaks and troughs in cinema-going tied to both fluctuations in ticket prices/public spending power and access to cinemas that mirror many of the world’s film cultures, and particularly those found in so-called emerging economies. With exhibition that dates from as early as 1896 and production from 1897, Brazil has experienced cycles of intense production and state funding, predicated on the twin pillars of belief in the significant contribution film makes to national identity, and its potential for contributing financially to state coffers. 1 While many observers argue that film production in Brazil has never constituted an industry per se, the country is much better placed than most of its neighbours in South America to claim the existence of what was once unproblematically referred to as a “national cinema” (Shaw and Dennison 2007: 1–5). Brazilians in their millions flocked to watch the home-grown chanchadas or comedies of the 1940s and 50s, and by the mid-1970s Brazilian films had reached a very respectable 30% participation in the market (Ikeda 2015: 79), thanks in large part to generous state support for production and distribution. As explored in Chapter 2, Brazilian films have been a constant presence in the major European film festivals, with the avant-garde Cinema Novo movement of the 1960s cementing the country’s fame for producing exportable films that are both aesthetically innovative and that contribute to debates on the social issues of the day. In the second decade of the twenty-first century the broad view of Brazilian cinema is that it is currently riding high: Brazil constitutes the world’s eighth largest audience (Rufino 2018); Brazilians view films on a record number of cinema screens (Moraes 2018); the audio-visual industry generates 12billions of reals annually (Festival de Gramado 2018); and as I will discuss in more detail in Chapter 2, domestic films are breaking box-office records.
