"New history of Brazilian cinema", a work organized by Fernão Pessoa Ramos and Sheila Schvarzsman, brings together 27 authors
The numbers are superlative: almost 20 years of maturation, 27 authors and 1.228 pages, distributed in two volumes. But it is the originality of the research, approaches and methodology, especially in the historiographical field, that places New history of Brazilian cinema (Edições Sesc), book organized by Fernão Pessoa Ramos and Sheila Schvarzsman, at the level of reference works – perhaps, the largest – on the subject in the country.
Fernão Pessoa Ramos, professor at Unicamp's Institute of Arts (IA), avoids making comparisons with predecessor works, but when asked about the book's contributions to the academic sphere, he highlights the option for a methodology that privileges “dialogue with its time”, leaving aside “excessive conceptual digression”.
“The collection is based on the certainty that it is possible to work with the topic, bypassing the methodological hypertrophy that exists in recent excerpts. Our option was to start from an already established field of studies on Brazilian cinema, believing in the fruitfulness of a basic chronological axis without necessarily detaining ourselves in phases, stages, movements, cycles or endorsed authorial excerpts”, the organizers point out at the opening of the introduction of the book. “The intention was to highlight the interest in writing and thinking about cinema made in Brazil, exploring its singularity and the multiple webs that emerge from it”.
The webs mentioned by Fernão Ramos and Sheila Schvarzsman, as demonstrated by the nuances and the overall collection, take into account the entire – invariably bumpy – path of cinema in the country, without failing to expose particularities and angles hitherto ignored, preserving the focus chronological and avoiding the limitations of the “standard version” resulting from the lack of primary research, as Ramos recalls when mentioning the new foundations laid by film theorist and historian David Bordwell http://www.unicamp.br/unicamp/ju/614/arte-do-cinema-quadro-quadro, Author of About the history of cinematographic style (Unicamp Publisher).
To give just a few examples, not only seminal or consecrated periods and movements are covered, but also productions and characters relegated until then to ostracism or to the footnotes. At the same time, Fernão Ramos recalls, based on “new research standards and rigorous methodology”, there is interaction with social media and the internet. “The figure of the Brazilian cinema researcher with an exclusively critical profile, relying on memory and private databases, accumulated throughout his life, was left behind”, diagnoses the professor.
In this context, Fernão Ramos and Sheila Schvarzsman reinforce that “studies of specifically cinematic social practices, such as exhibition and its forms, as well as the relationship with the spectator, were not left out. In the same way, we sought to include protagonists that have not had due importance in historiography: the participation of women in Brazilian cinema, the presence of gender in its diversity and black and indigenous filmmakers and actors”.
In the interview that follows, Fernão Ramos talks, among other topics, about the book's production process, highlights the importance of the work in the field of research and teaching, and analyzes contemporary Brazilian cinema.
Jornal da Unicamp – What was the book production process like?
Fernão Pessoa Ramos – The creation involved work lasting several years, starting at the end of the 1990s, with a more objective bias towards completion in 2014. The idea came from an update of the 1986 edition of the History of Brazilian Cinema and evolved into an entirely new book responding to contemporary demands. Hence the name New History of Brazilian Cinema, which aims to incorporate recent themes and methodologies. It brings to light unpublished primary sources and current research, defending the relevance of the chronological axis that guides and structures the work. It is a collective work that involved 27 authors, including me and Sheila Schvarzsman as organizers. There are two volumes and an expanded e-book version – with three more essays and new filmography of releases.
We highlighted periods that have a solid tradition in research, but with new approaches, such as the cinema of its origins in Brazil, the regional peaks of production in the world, the transition to sound, INCE, Chanchada, Vera Cruz, the productions independents in the 1950s, Cinema Novo, Cinema Marginal, production linked to Embrafilme, Pornochanchada, the great crisis of the late 1980s, Retomada, documentary cinema, contemporary production, etc. We guide collaborators to place emphasis on current themes involving gender issues in their diversity, the role of women in Brazilian Cinema in different historical periods, contemporary perspectives with representations of indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples.
JU – What moved them? What were your goals?
Fernão Pessoa Ramos – Our main objective was to provide a panoramic view of the history of Brazilian cinema, in dialogue with its time. The current issue was central. There are now new research standards and many works with rigorous methodology dealing with different parameters for data collection, including interacting with the openness of social media and the internet in general.
The figure of the Brazilian cinema researcher with an exclusively critical profile, relying on memory and private databases, accumulated throughout his life, was left behind. Along with the discoveries of information sources, we wanted to highlight thematic issues in tune with today's world, without getting stuck in dilemmas from the last century.
JU – What, in your opinion, is the book’s greatest contribution from a historiographical perspective?
Fernão Pessoa Ramos – Perhaps to recover the very idea of a cinema history. Based on questions raised by post-structuralist thinking about the ethical dimensions that are involved in opting for one's own historical perspective, there is a risk, in my point of view, of throwing out the water along with the baby.
The work focused on primary sources, data collection and chronological bias, was overshadowed by the solar rise of concern with methodological issues. These, in themselves, seem valid to me, but the excess of conceptual digression has resulted in a tendency – in our area and in others too – to privilege abstract concepts that sometimes keep spinning around themselves, without leaving their place.
Our book aims to recover the desire to work with the history of Brazilian cinema, based on periods and methodology that incorporate current hot issues.
JU – In the presentation, the authors state that the work seeks to dialogue with foreign historiography. What emerged from this dialogue?
Fernão Pessoa Ramos – The dialogue takes place within the parameters mentioned above. References for contemporary research from new archives in cinematheques and other research centers produce tangible results, both in Brazil and around the world. In a book released by the Unicamp publisher, About the History of Cinematic Style, by David Bordwell, the potential of working on these new bases becomes evident.
As the author says, it is about questioning the “limitations arising from the lack of primary research” that led to the creation of a kind of “standard version” of the history of cinema, sometimes supported by myths and memory frames. These are easier versions, which seek a teleology of history that is not very precise. Technological teleology, for example, in its over-determination, can be mentioned. The concerns of contemporary thought are valid based on the deconstruction of the subjective dimension of the enunciative voice through the knowledge/power of the axis of filmic enunciation. But they should not exhaust the vision of the horizon, they can open space for a more hermeneutic stance. The challenge is knowing how to penetrate the tangle, without letting yourself be carried away by the abyss, nor losing sight of cinema and those entities that are its authors.
JU – It can be seen that there is a research effort permeating the entire work. What are the book's greatest contributions to the academic field?
Fernão Pessoa Ramos – It is certainly to stimulate interest in Brazilian cinema among students and teachers, providing material for new disciplines and courses, for teaching and research. The idea is to provide a kind of map of the mine, pointing out where to enter and how to go deeper. Cinema came late to Brazilian universities and entered through the back door, mainly from the 1970s onwards, within the new Communication courses.
Despite a certain bibliography in common, the marriage between cinema/audiovisual – by audiovisual we imagine a very expanded “film”, starting from museum installations to new television series in the Netflix format – and the area of Communication has always seemed to me like a forced marriage. It was a meeting like that in which the bride is taken to the altar not of her own free will, but out of convenience. From reading the two volumes of our book, I believe it is clear that cinema is an art, as are literature, music, performing arts, dance and painting.
At Unicamp, it appears very well situated at the Institute of Arts. However, in the classification of areas of knowledge of federal agencies, it was awarded a small grant – a sub-sub-area – of Communication which, in turn, is still part of a larger whole, the “Applied Social Sciences”. The arts and aesthetics ended up being left behind in this context, which generates a series of difficulties and deformations. Some of the problems we face are due to disparate bibliographies and fields of knowledge that do not complement each other and do not articulate.
So, our book shows that Brazilian cinema exists in its diachronic perspective and is composed of something called film, with its authors at different levels of the composition of an aesthetic expression. The movement of cinema in the time of history comes in organic waves, interacting with other arts, with more or less defined directions that rise and fall depending on the moment. The waves form trends that are specific points of interaction with society, ideological sections, which evolve from a diachronic perspective. And, the most important thing for us, is that there is now a whole generation of researchers, teachers, students, inside and outside the university, who like to work and create in this mode of expression that is aesthetic. They are fascinated by the perspectives it opens up to express themselves.
The space for thought and for the very expression of sensations and emotions through art is therefore indispensable in a modern university. The world's main universities recognize and affirm this, and Unicamp is increasingly in tune with this demand.
JU – There are, in the same way, essays that seek new approaches, with an unusual depth and rarely found in similar works. What gaps does the book fill in this context?
Fernão Pessoa Ramos – There are few books with an overview of Brazilian cinema. We do not have a great author, as in literature, theater, or song, who dedicated himself, in the classical period, to outlining this more global vision, who took to heart the challenge of writing a panoramic work. The “stories” we have are clearly introductory – like that of Alex Viany in Introduction to Brazilian Cinema, that of Glauber Rocha in Critical Review of Brazilian Cinema, or that of Paulo Emílio Salles Gomes in 70 Years of Brazilian Cinema. There are still those who are more concerned, carrying the weight of methodological questions, as is the case of Jean-Claude Bernardet in Classic Historiography of Brazilian Cinema.
An innovation in our book would be the challenge of outlining and affirming the panoramic bias, even if not personally authored, but carried out by a team. We also avoided having a more thematic vision as an axis, which would draw its gravity from singular sections with a different scope from that which we aim for – for example, a focus centered on the issue of gender, on the media aspect of cinema, in an approach exploring the representation of class, etc. As mentioned, we seek to deal with a vast set of contemporary demands, inserting them within a historiographical disposition, which sees cinema in its diachronic dimension, exploring periods that are outlined.
JU – The work shows that, especially from the 1930s until the end of the XNUMXth century, national cinema sometimes depended on the hand of the State – in the cases of INCE and Embrafilme –, sometimes on the big studios and the private sector. What a balance Mr. make this alternation?
Fernão Pessoa Ramos – Cinema is an art that has its particularities. One of them is that it necessarily involves high costs for its implementation. Even though in certain historical periods this issue is overcome, promoting the low production styles that revolutionized its form – neo-realism, nouvelle vague, Cinema Novo, Cinema Marginal, now productions using more agile digital technology –, the standard Minimum funding is always high, especially when compared to literature, painting and other arts. Cinema is a team manifestation that always involves a group of people and a production effort to give shape to what we call mise-en-scène.
In this sense, in all countries in the world – with the exception perhaps of certain sectors of major North American production – cinema, to become viable, usually relies on the support of the State. Vera Cruz, in this sense, was an exception, which lasted a short time and did not succeed, breathing almost exclusively on the surplus capital that the new international order of post-war Europe momentarily threw into non-central economies. As an example of good national coordination with the State, here in Brazil, we had Embrafilme. It is a case of successful interaction of a state-owned company getting directly involved in the production and distribution/marketing of films and which, at certain times, dominated distribution in Latin America as a whole, scaring the majors North Americans.
In the years 1990/2000 this structure was replaced by other forms of allocation of State resources, through federal, state or municipal tax exemption laws. Between 1930 and 1960 there was INCE, the National Institute of Educational Cinema, focusing on the production of documentaries which, with the cover of educational films, allowed the allocation of state resources to cinema. It was a much more restricted production system compared to the Embrafilme era.
On the dark side of the Moon, there was the only Brazilian Cinema production that was completely independent of the State and that managed to create a niche necessary for it to flourish: pornochanchada. Covering the entire circuit of cinematographic merchandise – production, distribution and exhibition –, pornochanchadas dominated vast sectors of Brazilian Cinema for more than a decade. With little or no support from Embrafilme, mainly in Boca do Lixo in São Paulo, this cinema built its own exhibition circuit served by a dynamic distribution structure that fed new productions. Had his own star system, its forms of promotion and magazines, renowned directors with authorial works, trained technicians who lived exclusively from filming and a dynamic environment of film production that was buzzing through the bars and production companies located around Rua do Triunfo, close to Estação da Luz, in São Paul.
JU – Still in the field of alternation, it is observed that there are periods of abundant and diversified production and others of crisis. To which Mr. attribute this painting?
Fernão Pessoa Ramos – I often say that cinema, like life according to the poet, comes in waves. Perhaps due to the high cost of art, this undulating character of periods is more acute. The fact is that, when there are favorable conditions, cinema germinates like an easy plant and films proliferate. As soon as there is a lack of rain or fertilizer, it dries up and withers, also at an impressive speed. It must be good to make cinema, for there to be so many people wanting to experience it – sometimes even more people than want to watch it. This transformed cinema into an art that is as perennial as it is dynamic. Every ten years, a new technology is discovered – sound, television, videocassette recorders, digital technologies – and the death of cinema and films is declared, which soon return taking on new historical and formal variants.
Once the production equation is resolved, there is always a lot of filming. In the Brazilian case, the last hiccup, the last syncopation of national production, was the end of the 1980s in the so-called “great crisis”, about which we have a text in the book. We went from the very favorable period of the emergence of the cinemanova generation followed by the achievements of Embrafilme, to a complete paralysis of production. One of Fernando Collor's first acts, literally, was to close Embrafilme for good. Extinguishing it for him was symbolic. And Brazilian Cinema stopped. It is significant that, simultaneously, despite being independent of the State, the pornochanchada cycle also came to an end.
A new process of progressive recovery then began, which was called Resumption, until we ended up in the intense production of today, still suffering from the exhibition problems and dissemination deformations that we know.
JU – From a historical perspective, can it be said that national cinema has mirrored, throughout its history, Brazilian society and, ultimately, the country’s own history? If yes, to what extent?
Fernão Pessoa Ramos – The issue of the national, the nation-state, in cinema is problematic. It is easy to see that cinema is predominantly an art with strong national traits, an art that is delimited within different “nation-states”, including the issue of forms of financial support that have historically been predominantly national. The observation, however, should not turn into an exaltation that involves implicit denial of minority community groups within the State, or currents of aesthetic or ideological sensitivity that are constellated beyond nationality.
The concept of World cinema works well with contradiction, although sometimes it ends up getting tangled up in it. There is also the issue of speech, of language, which is strong in cinema as a modality of expression and which the more internationalist vision tends to leave aside. Paulo Emilio already drew attention to the relevance of this aspect as the blind spot of “looking in the mirror”. Brazilian Cinema provokes a type of visceral reaction in us that is unique, a kind of promiscuous intimacy that does not emerge in contact with other cinematography.
JU – Is it in this promiscuous proximity that the representation of history and society is placed?
Fernão Pessoa Ramos – Yes, there are moments in the history of Brazilian cinema in which the representation of history and the nation overlap and come to the foreground – as in the second wind of Cinema Novo, in the late 1960s. It is interesting to note how the most significant production in cinema Brazilian, the one that has international repercussions, is debated in the social rift that plagues the country. My thesis, in this sense, is that there is a great ghost that plagues our cinema, mainly from the second half of the XNUMXth century and that continues until today: it is that of guilt, of bad conscience due to social exclusion. It is in this sense that I speak of a promiscuous malaise.
The need for financing, already mentioned, makes the art of cinema an art exclusively for the middle and upper classes of Brazilian society and makes things more acute. It is an art of the elites, if we want to use a more populist term. There is no “Brazilian popular cinema”, as in the song there is Brazilian popular music. There is no organic manifestation, with popular roots, like samba, involving the community of cultural producers and spectators/listeners. The moment we came closest to this was perhaps the pornochanchada, but the ideological cut, of petite bourgeoisie dazzled by the values of high society, is too strong to consider it a “popular” manifestation.
So, this social fissure that the enlightened middle class feels has a special weight in our cinematography. It is this – exasperated guilt or melancholy for the social abyss and its cruelty – that hits the nerve of the main Brazilian cinematographic authors. The malaise begins with Humberto Mauro and becomes more intense in the cinemanovista generation, in the paradoxes baroquely enhanced by Glauber, until it fully reaches the contemporary production of Retomada.
We continue to feel it in the tearful bad conscience of a Walter Salles in Central do Brasil; in the light ignorance of a presence that surrounds, teapots, but does not weigh, present in the postmodernism of Fernando Meirelles (City of God); in the obtuseness with fascist tones of José Padilha in both Tropa de Elite who wanted to mark with the iron of the logical order – the system – the intensity of the drive that escapes him; or in the great moments of the horror of malaise in Kleber Mendonça, images of a deaf and latent social conflict that overflows, a waterfall of blood (Sound around) or termite pest that devours from the inside (Aquarius). Great cinema is, then, an art that, due to its mass repercussion – perhaps this is where this fragile idea that it is a 'medium' of communication comes from –, brings very close to that breath of history's flapping wings.
JU – What analysis did you have? make of contemporary production?
Fernão Pessoa Ramos – Brazilian Cinema is probably going through a positive moment, even if it is far from ideal. According to Ancine, in 2017, 158 feature films were released, in the midst of an acute economic crisis. It is a number that is impressive in itself. The number of cinemas, 3.220, is also expanding, very close to breaking the historical record of 1975 – there were 3.276 cinemas. It is a significant amount that contradicts those who think that the movie theater is dead. In reality, the film coexists comfortably with new digital means of exhibition, coming and going.
To give you an idea, we went through the 1930s and 1940s with something around a dozen feature films per year, increasing progressively until reaching the historical record of 1984, with 104 feature films, a quantity that must be put into perspective due to the strong presence of feature films. explicit sex at the time. During the great crisis in the early 1990s, and then during the Resumption, the number of launches reached less than a dozen per year, making the 1984 picture seem like a lost dream from a distant past.
We currently occupy around 15% of the exhibition market – which is not a negligible number when compared to other cinematography, also with a strong tradition in its own market, such as French, German, Italian or Argentine. For better or worse, we have a production that is entering the exhibition market. They are predominantly comedies, often of dubious taste, but it will perhaps be up to the future to judge them rigorously. The chanchadas, which today delight our eyes, for years were considered by our best critics as a lesser cinema.
The B side of Brazilian Cinema breathes alternative cinema, small productions by young – and not so young – filmmakers who challenge schemes exclusively concerned with generating value in the market. Although both side A and side B breathe within the support mechanisms of the Brazilian State, low funding and the alternative exhibition circuit – festivals, film clubs, art rooms – allow for a type of expression aimed at more radical experiences. and innovative. These are films that aim for the most classic narrative form. In this context, an unprecedented popular production emerges, located on the outskirts, with producers with the profile of community NGOs.
Oscillating through the stylistics of documentary, in hybrid modes of staging and with its own rhythmic breathing, the brand new Brazilian cinema wants to change the tones of speech and listening on screen. Filmmakers like Affonso Uchôa (Arabia); Adirley Queiroz (White Leave, Black Stay); André Novais Oliveira (She Comes Back on Thursday); Juliana Antunes (Baroness); Rodrigo Siqueira (Terra Deu Terra Come); Helvécio Martins/Clarisse Campolina (Girimunho); Marília Rocha (What I Miss); Sergio Borges (The Sky Over Shoulders); Gabriel Mascaro (Neon Ox); Cao Guimarães (The Soul of the Bone) and many others, make up this table.
There is also Kleber Mendonça, perhaps the most talented of the newcomers, who already works in a broader production scheme, with insertion in the exhibition system and on the major international circuit. In its diversity, contemporary Brazilian cinema production testifies to an undeniable buzz and the dynamism of young people.
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Who is it
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Fernão Pessoa Ramos
