Decolonisation in Latin American Cinema

Decolonisation in Latin American Cinema

Maite Conde

This seminar examines the relationship between decolonial politics and cinematic practices (production, reception and exhibition) in Latin America, zooming in on the particular case study of Brazil and its Cinema Novo movement. It starts by the relationship between film debates and social, political and economic debates that emerged in the late 1950s concerning the country’s underdevelopment, it looks at how these were articulated in new cinematic aesthetics and politics and led to the belief in cinema as a political avant-garde that, by breaking away from Hollywood’s dominant aesthetics, could enlighten the people as to the country’s reality and change society. The seminar will then consider the so-called historical failures of this utopian movement as manifested during the dictatorship and will also examine how its political ontology is resurging in the country’s contemporary cinema. Key films explored are Deus e o diabo na terra do sol, Terra em transe, and Bacurau. Students are expected to have viewed the films before the seminar (these are widely available on-line and DVD copies also available at the MMLL library and through CLAS).

Filmography (films marked with * are essential viewing)

*Deus e o diabo na terra do sol (Black God, White Devil, dir. Glauber Rocha, 1964)

Terra em Transe (Land in Anguish, dir. Glauber Rocha, 1967)

*Bacurau (dirs. Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles, 2022)

Readings (essential readings marked with an *)

*Randal Johnson, “Brazilian Cinema Novo,” Bulletin of Latin American Research, Vol 3 No. 2 (1984), pp. 95-106.

*Ismail Xavier, Allegories of Underdevelopment. Aesthetics and Politics in Brazilian Cinema. Minneapolis: University of Minesota Press, 1997. “Introduction” (1-28), Chapter 1, “The Teleology of History “(31-54); chapter 2, “Land in Anguish; Allegory and Agony” (57-94).

*Glauber Rocha, “An Aesthetics of Hunger” (1965, manifesto). On Cinema. Glauber Rocha. Ed. Ismail Xavier, London: IB Tauris, 2019, pp. 41-46

*Glauber Rocha, “An Aesthetics of Dreams” (1971, manifesto). On Cinema. Glauber Rocha. Ed. Ismail Xavier, London: IB Tauris, 2019, pp. 121-126.

*Marcelo Ikeda, “The Ambiguities of Bacurau,” Film Quarterly Vol. 74, Issue 2 (2020), 81-83.

Euclides da Cunha, Rebellion in the Backlands, London: Penguin Classica, 2010. Part 1 – “The land” and “The Man.”

Paulo Emílio Salles Gomes, “Cinema: A Trajectory within Underdevelopment.” Paulo Emílio Salles Gomes. On Brazil and Global Cinema, eds Maite Conde and Stephanie Dennison. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2019. pp. 192-208.

Ana M Lopez, “Facing up to Hollywood,” Reinventing Film Studies. Eds. Christine Gledhill and Linda Williams, . London: Arnold, 2000, pp. 419-438.

Emilio Sauri, “Decolonise the Western. Bacurau and An Aesthetics of Humilation.” https://post45.org/2021/08/decolonize-the-western-bacurau-and-the-aesthetics-of-humiliation/

Jocimar Dias Jr. Bacurau as Science Fiction Revenge. Film Quarterly Vol. 74, No 2 (2020), pp. 84-86.

Francesco Sticchi, “The Precarious Multitude of Bacurau. Theory Culture and Society Vol. 39, nos 7-8, pp. 201-215.

Reading Lists Online (LEGANTO)