The Paradox of the Popular in Brazilian Cinema

The large social gap in Brazil introduces a fissure in representation that touches its limits, reproducing over and over figures of an abyss. On one side, the middle class; on the other, the “popular” or the “people,” understood as a vast majority disinherited. As cinematographic art is made exclusively by the middle class, a kind of “mauvaise conscience” appears and is the central motor of an aesthetic of doubt and guilt. This lecture will address changes in the representation of the “popular” in Brazilian cinema over the 20th and 21st centuries, mostly looking at Cinema Novo.

Fernão Pessoa Ramos is a Professor at the Center for Research in Documentary Film in UNICAMP (Campinas State University).