Brazilian Cinema Novo

Abstract

Over two decades have passed since Cinema Novo burst upon and profoundly altered the Brazilian cinematic and cultural scene. In these two decades, many things have changed in Brazil. The populist government of the early 1960s was quite unceremoniously removed by a 1964 military coup dfetat and replaced by a military regime which only now appears to be losing its hold on power. With them, Brazil's military rulers brought a reign of repression and torture, which intensified in 1969 and began to ebb only in the mid-1970s. Accompanying the repression was a period of growth known as the 'economic miracle', which meant the brutal redistribution of already poorly distributed wealth from the working classes to the upper classes. The miracle, in turn, has given way to the nightmare, a 100 billion dollar foreign debt, the servicing of which consumes virtually all ofthe country's export earnings and which threatens to tear asunder the country's social fabric. Brazilian cinema has changed as well. In the early 1960s, Glauber Rocha summarized the concerns of the initial phase of Cinema Novo in his Fanonianinspired manifesto, 'An Aesthetic of Hunger', also known as 'An Aesthetic of Violence'. In this manifesto he wrote:

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