Documentary Discourses and National Identity: Humberto Mauro's Brasiliana Series and Linduarte Noronha's Aruanda

Abstract

PARTIV DOCUMENTARY AND NATIONAL IDENTITY DOCUMENTARYDISCOURSES and NAHONAL IDENTITY HUMBERTO MAURO'S BRASILIANA SERIES AND LINDUARTE NORONHAS ARUANDA ____________________RANDAL JOHNSON____________________ UC LosAngeles The 1950s represented an important period of transition in Brazilian cinema. The studio system revealed its lack of viabUity and new conceptions of film practice, production, and aesthetics emerged and were fiercely debated. The Vera Cruz Studios had been founded in 1949 in Säo Bernardo do Campo, just outside of Säo Paulo, with the objective of developing a film industry based on a Hollywood model of production and making films with a European veneer. Five years and 18 feature films later, Vera Cruz declared bankruptcy, ending a cycle that had begun in the early 1930s with the creation , in Rio de Janeiro, of the Cinédia studios and that had continued in the early 1940s with the formation of Atlántida, also in Rio de Janeiro. With the demise of Vera Cruz, the dream of creating a national film industry based on a studio model of production turned into a nightmare. Coinciding with the end of Vera Cruz were intense discussions about possible alternative models of film production and aesthetics. This is the moment when the impact of Italian neo-realism began to be felt in Brazil with the early films of Alex Viany, Nelson Pereira dos Santos, and Roberto Santos. The search for new models for Brazilian cinema would flourish in the early 1960s with the emergence of Cinema Novo. Within this context of transition, this essay wiU contrast documentary discourses of two directors, Humberto Mauro and Linduarte Noronha, who have been repeatedly identified as important precursors of Cinema Novo. More specifically, I will discuss a series of short films, known as the Brasiliana series, made by Humberto Mauro between 1945 and 1956, and Noronha's 1960Amanda, focusing on the films' conflicting notions of national identity —a romantic, nostalgic, idylUc vision in the case of Mauro, a much more hard-nosed, critical vision in the case of Noronha— and on the relationship between their respective documentary practice and Cinema Novo. In 1925, working in the small town of Cataguases in the state of Minas Gerais, film pioneer Mauro (1897-1983) initiated what has since been called©1998 NUEVO TEXTO CRITICO Vol. XI No. 21/22, Enero a Diciembre 1998 194____________________________________________________RANDAL JOHNSON the "Cataguases cycle," including such feature-length films as Na Primavera da Vida (1926), Tesauro Perdido (1927), Brasa Dormida (1928), and Sangue Mineiro (1930). In 1930, he began working with the Cinédia Studios in Rio de Janeiro, where he directed Labios sem Beijos (1930), Ganga Bruta (1933), and the feature-length semi-documentary Voz do Carnaval (1933). In 1935 he directed Favela dos Meus Amores for Carmen Santos's BrasU Vita Filmes, which was foUowed a year later by Cidade Mulher. In 1937 he made Descobrimento do Brasil, which was produced by the Instituto do Cacau da Bahia and which has recently been restored by the Fundaçao Nacional de Arte (Funarte) in Rio de Janeiro. Mauro directed Argila for BrasU Vita in 1940, and in 1952 his last feature, O Canto da Saudade, in his own Rancho Alegre Studio in the smaU town of Volta Grande, Minas Gerais. After the mid-1930s, the bulk of Mauro's cinematic activity involved documentary films of a scientific or cultural nature. In fact, after 1936 Mauro made only two features, Argila (1940) and O Canto da Saudade (1952), yet his total production after that time was in the hundreds. In contrast, Linduarte Noronha, a journalist from the Northeastern state of Pernambuco working in the state Paraiba, directed only two short films, Amanda (1960) and Cajueiro Nordestino (1962), and one feature, O Salario da Morte (1970), based on José Bezerra Filho's novel Fogo. Despite Noronha's Umited production, his impact was great. On the one hand, his cinematic activity helped give birth to an important documentary tendency in Brazilian cinema, exempUfied perhaps most perfectly by the work of Vladimir Carvalho, who was one oí Amanda's assistant directors and who went on to make such films as O Pais de Säo Saruê (1967-71), O Hörnern de Areia (1981), and O Evangelho segundo...

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