ABSTRACT
Lúcia Murat’s 2005 documentary Olhar estrangeiro is based on a book by academic Tunico Amâncio, O Brasil dos gringos: imagens no cinema (2000), an absorbing monograph that contains an exhaustive list of films made by foreign film directors that are set in, or include significant references to Brazil. While Amâncio’s book attempts a wide coverage and provides an examination of a range of themes in relation to this representation, Murat’s film concentrates on sex and sensuality (“a carne e o osso” [flesh and bones], as she states in voiceover in the documentary), the “clichés que nos perseguem” (clichés that follow us around), and the factual inaccuracies that filmmakers have been guilty of committing down the years. The film is made up of interviews with a number of directors, producers and actors involved in making films set in Brazil from the 1960s to the 1990s, including box-office hits such as Blame it on Rio (Stanley Donan, 1984), the Jean-Paul Belmondo vehicle L’Homme de Rio (Philippe de Broca, 1964) and the blockbuster Anaconda (Luis Llosa, 1997), as well as more “straight-to-video” fare such as Last Stop Wonderland (Brad Anderson, 1998) and Lambada: The Forbidden Dance (Greydon Clark, 1990). Murat informs us in voiceover that at the time of making her documentary 220 films featuring Brazil had been made outside the country, so if sheer volume is anything to go by, a feature-length documentary on the representation of Brazil on foreign screens is amply justified. It is surprising that so few critical works exist, whether film or essay, that engage substantively with this broad and fascinating subject. 1
