Winner of the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies (BAFTSS) 2023 Award for Best First Monograph.
Winner of the Association of Moving Image Researchers (AIM) 2022 Award for Best Monograph.
Guilherme Carréra's compelling book examines imagery of ruins in contemporary Brazilian cinema and considers these representations in the context of Brazilian society. Carréra analyses three groups of unconventional documentaries focused on distinct geographies: BrasÃlia -
The Age of Stone (2013) and
White Out, Black In (2014); Rio de Janeiro -
ExPerimetral (2016),
The Harbour (2013),
Tropical Curse (2016) and
HU Enigma (2011); and indigenous territories -
Corumbiara: They Shoot Indians, Don't They? (2009),
Tava, The House of Stone (2012),
Two Villages, One Path (2008) and
Guarani Exile (2011). In portraying ruinscapes in different ways, these powerful films articulate critiques of the notions of progress and (under) development in the Brazilian nation.
Carréra invites the reader to walk amid the debris and reflect upon the strategies of spatial representation employed by the filmmakers. He addresses this body of films in relation to the legacies of Cinema Novo, Tropicália and Cinema Marginal, asking how these presentday films dialogue with or depart from previous traditions. Through this dialogue, he argues, the selected films challenge not only documentary-making conventions but also the country's official narrative.
Carréra, Guilherme: - Guilherme Carréra holds a PhD in Film from the Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media, at the University of Westminster, in London, United Kingdom. His project was sponsored by the CAPES Foundation (Ministry of Education, Brazil).
Nagib, Lúcia: - Lúcia Nagib is Professor of Film and Director of the Centre for Film Aesthetics and Cultures (CFAC) at the University of Reading. Her research has focused, among other subjects, on polycentric approaches to world cinema, new waves and new cinemas, cinematic realism and intermediality. She is the author of World Cinema and the Ethics of Realism (Continuum, 2011), Brazil on Screen: Cinema Novo, New Cinema, Utopia (I.B. Tauris, 2007), The Brazilian Film Revival: Interviews with 90 Filmmakers of the 90s (Editora 34, 2002), Born of the Ashes: The Auteur and the Individual in Oshima's Films (Edusp, 1995), Around the Japanese Nouvelle Vague (Editora da Unicamp, 1993) and Werner Herzog: Film as Reality (EstaçãoLiberdade, 1991). She is the editor of Impure Cinema: Intermedial and Intercultural Approaches to Film (with Anne Jerslev, 2013), Theorizing World Cinema (with Chris Perriam and Rajinder Dudrah, I.B. Tauris, 2011), Realism and the Audiovisual Media (with Cecília Mello, Palgrave, 2009), The New Brazilian Cinema (I.B. Tauris, 2003), Master Mizoguchi (Navegar, 1990) and Ozu (Marco Zero, 1990).
Ross, Julian: - Julian Ross is a University Lecturer at the Centre for the Arts in Society.
