Brazil Heise, Tatiana S. Remaking Brazil: Contested

¶ … Brazil

Heise, Tatiana S. Remaking Brazil: Contested National Identities in Contemporary Brazilian Cinema. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2012.

Main Arguments

Brazil is a deeply diverse society with dozens of ethnic and racial groups represented in its citizenry. Many of these ethnic and racial influences have been present in contemporary Brazilian cinema, but there has been a dearth of academic research on these highly diverse films, filmmakers, stories, themes, and actors. Heise frames her discussion by presenting the concept of the nation of Brazil as an imagined community. Through this framework, she considers how the dominant constructs of brasilidade are represented in film. Brasilidade is the popular term for the national consciousness of people living in Brazil. The application of brasilidade in contemporary fiction movies and documentary films enables an examination of the way the ethnic and racial influences are dramatized, supported, attacked, or deconstructed. Moreover, Remaking Brazil takes its place among the growing bibliographic corpus on films made during the rotomada or renaissance of Brazilian cinema, which is marked as having begun in the mid-1990s.

Perspective and Relationships

A robust film industry has existed in Brazil for decades, with the popularity of Brazilian cinema growing across the globe, essentially catapulting Brazilian film to a world-class status. Popular films such as City of God and Central Station received international accolades and industry acclaim. Heise uses Remaking Brazil as a vehicle to magnify the particular attributes and messages of films released in Brazil during the time period between 1995 and 2010. Notable films from this contemporary period include the following: Elite Squad, Orfeu, The Trespasser, and Almost Brothers. These films address issues of ethnicity, national identity, and race in the same manner as earlier Brazilian films.