Woman-Centered Brazilian Cinema

Filmmakers and Protagonists of the Twenty-First Century

Edited by Jack A. Draper III & Cacilda M. Rêgo

Subjects: Latin American Studies, Film Studies, Women's Studies, Cultural Studies
Series: SUNY series in Latin American Cinema
Hardcover : 9781438490250, 288 pages, October 2022
Paperback : 9781438490243, 288 pages, April 2023

Alternative formats available from:

Table of contents

Introduction
Jack A. Draper III and Cacilda M. Rêgo

Part 1: Breaking Ground/Making Space in the Industry

1. Recognizing Women’s Contributions to Brazilian Cinema
Cacilda M. Rêgo

2. Behind the Scenes: Brazilian Women Screenwriters in Film and Television
Leslie L. Marsh

3. Resistance and Online Activism: Brazilian Women Filmmakers’ Initiatives (2014–2017)
Daniela Verztman Bagdadi

4. Interview with Maria Augusta Ramos
Jack A. Draper III, Cacilda M. Rêgo, and Gustavo Procopio Furtado

Part 2: Politics of Public/Private Spaces

5. From Tweets to the Streets: Women’s Documentary Filmmaking and Brazil’s Feminist Spring
Rebecca J. Atencio

6. Motherhood and Making Kin in Contemporary Brazilian Cinema
Jack A. Draper III

7. The Many Mirrors of Maria Augusta Ramos: Landscape, Institutions, and Everyday Lives in Contemporary Brazil
Paula Halperin

8. Interview with Petra Costa
Jack A. Draper III

Part 3: Intersecting Identities

9. Conditions for a Twenty-First-Century Black Woman Cinema in Brazil: The Politics and Aesthetics of Yasmin Thayná’s Audiovisual Practice
María Mercedes Vázquez Vázquez

10. Afro-Brazilian Women Creative Workers Speak: Juliana Vicente’s Standpoint Cinema (Cinema of O Lugar de Fala)
Reighan Gillam

11. Interview with Mari Corrêa
Gustavo Procopio Furtado

12. Interview with Paula Sacchetta
Rebecca J. Atencio

Contributors
Index

Illuminates the complex factors that have helped or hindered creative work by and about women in the twenty-first-century Brazilian film industry.

Description

Woman-Centered Brazilian Cinema highlights the bold, inspiring, and diverse work of female filmmakers—including directors, screenwriters, and producers—and female protagonists in the twenty-first-century Brazilian film industry. This volume examines the diverse production and distribution spaces these filmmakers are working in, including documentary, experimental, and short filmmaking, as well as commercial feature films. An intersectional approach runs throughout the chapters with complex considerations around gender, race, sexuality, and class. The book features a mix of research methods and genres, with macro-level political, economic, and industry-wide views of gender disparities appearing alongside in-depth conversations with contemporary filmmakers Maria Augusta Ramos, Petra Costa, Mari Corrêa, and Paula Sacchetta, focused on micro-level personal experiences. In bringing together original essays and interviews, the volume provides valuable information for students of Brazil in general and of Brazilian film in particular.

Jack A. Draper III is Associate Professor of Portuguese at the University of Missouri. He is the author of Saudade in Brazilian Cinema: The History of Emotion on Film and Forró and Redemptive Regionalism from the Brazilian Northeast: Popular Music in a Culture of Migration, and is translator of The Black Man in Brazilian Soccer. Cacilda M. Rêgo is Professor of Portuguese and Brazilian Cultural Studies in the Department of World Languages and Cultures at Utah State University. She is coeditor (with Carolina Rocha) of New Trends in Argentine and Brazilian Cinema and coeditor (with Marcus Brasileiro) of Migration in Lusophone Cinema.

Reviews

"The prose of the essays is readable, and the scholarly apparatus is thorough." — CHOICE

"Woman-Centered Brazilian Cinema looks beyond the white, male filmmaking canon and examines the impact of film viewing beyond the traditional cinema-going experience. Unique in its coverage, this collection makes a very significant contribution to the field." — Stephanie Dennison, author of Remapping Brazilian Film Culture in the Twenty-First Century