We love it!
The digital 21st century has transformed the 20th century incentive to study film. Well over a decade into the new millennium, film studies is evolving to the extent that it is possible to posit a new and expansive concept of its academic and social worth within an international curriculum in communication, information and media studies.
Our plan, which was slowly coming together, was that The Routledge Companion to World Cinema would respond to, analyse, illustrate and serve all this. We knew that the establishment of many new degree schemes and even departments of film studies in the UK and elsewhere provided evidence of growing interest in film studies as an academic discipline, one that is international, multilayered and… (now what’s that phrase? Oh yeah!) …employability facing.
For example, the University of Leeds continues to invest in new posts in the Centre for World Cinemas and Digital Cultures and develop its flagship Masters programme in World Cinema (the first of its kind), while the University of Birmingham furthers its investment in film studies by restructuring its undergraduate and postgraduate provision in film theory, history and practice in order to provide a more cohesive research unit called B-Film and a new Department of Film and Creative Writing.
And that’s just us!
Clearly, if The Routledge Companion to World Cinema was going to have value it needed to consider and illustrate how the surge in the evolution of filmmaking via digital technologies, global communication and user-friendly educational systems and networks has brought with it a transformation in film studies, one that is as capable of revising historical constructs as it is of positing new strategies of analysis for contemporary modes of viewing.
There are numerous excellent publications on World cinema, yet it can seem as if the field is extremely divergent and even, at times, divisive. We definitely did not want to police all this current activity, but we did want to create a touchstone volume that would unite divergent approaches and seek to formulate a conceptual framework or frameworks that would pave the way for the emergence of a new film studies capable of responding to the multiple demands of moving image culture in the 21st century.
We also want World peace, non-fattening crisps and our country back (to what it was before the referendum); but first things first.
So we knew that we also had to put ourselves forward, not just as editors but as contributors to The Routledge Companion to World Cinema too. In a rare moment when she was wasn’t paying attention, we pushed Steph to the front of the queue.
Stephanie Dennison is a member of the editorial board for numerous reasons. The professional ones are that she’s Professor in Brazilian Studies and a founding member of the Centre for World Cinemas, at the University of Leeds. She is co-author of two monographs on Brazilian cinema (2004; 2007), co-editor of the seminal Remapping World Cinema (2006) from which we took our cue and in which I also have a chapter (quid pro quo, Clarice!), and editor of World Cinema: As Novas Cartografias do Cinema Mundial (2013).
Steph didn’t really need to do an abstract as she was an editor and the rest of us were hardly going to say anything in the hope that we would not be challenged on ours. But being Steph she submitted one all the same.
Brazilian Cinema on the Global Screen
Brazil has one of the largest and most profitable audio-visual sectors in the world, and one of the most productive film industries in Latin America. Despite this, and despite the country’s increased profile in international relations and global economic affairs, historically Brazilian films have not gained the exposure that they arguably merit, despite the regular production of both ‘quality’ films likely to appeal to art-house audiences worldwide, and those that dialogue with the universally popular Brazilian soap operas (such Brazilian films regularly attract domestic audiences in excess of four million). More often than not, when they are discussed by academics and critics, or when they are programmed at festivals, for example, Brazilian films are lumped together into ‘Latin American cinema’, despite a number of quite stark differences between Brazil and the bulk of the other industries in Latin America (size of industry, language spoken, availability of state funding, size of domestic audience, lack of reliance on coproductions, and so on).
Much has changed, however, in the last 10 years in relation both to film culture within Brazil, how films are produced and funded, and to Brazilian cinema’s reception abroad. This chapter seeks to document and comment on these changes. Along with an overview of film production in Brazil in the last ten years, which will include a discussion of the large number of Globo-Filmes’ productions that are commercially successful within the domestic market, this chapter will focus on issues relating to the reception and circulation of Brazilian films beyond Brazil, considering, for example, Brazilian cinema’s place in Latin American, Lusophone and World cinema as such terms are currently understood. The chapter will examine Brazilian film-makers’ increased impact on the World Cinema festival and funding circuits, how these circuits are navigated by film-makers and with what support from national funding bodies.
See! We know what we’re talking about! Or at least Steph does.