Amácio Mazzaropi in the Film and Culture of Brazil After Cinema Novo

by Bueno, Eva Paulino

• ISBN13: 9781137009180
• ISBN10: 1137009187
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-07-17
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

The same way that Brazil is greater than Rio de Janeiro, Brazilian cinema encompasses more than the films produced by Cinema Novo films. This book analyzes the work of one of the most popular Brazilian filmmakers of all time, Amacio Mazzaropi. A former circus and radio artist, Mazzaropi started his cinema career in 1951, with the Companhia Cinematografica Vera Cruz; in 1958 he founded his own company, PAM Filmes. He acted in, produced, directed more than thirty films in which he presents his beloved character, Jeca Tatu, and discusses race, class, gender, religion, and the meaning of nation.

Author Biography

Eva Paulino Bueno teaches Spanish and Portuguese at St. Marys University. Her previous publications include Resisting Boundaries: The Subject of Naturalism in Brazil (1995) as well as the co-edited volumes The Woman in Latin American and Spanish Literature: Essays on Iconic Characters (2012); The Encyclopedia of Latin American Women Writers (2008); I Wouldnt Want Anybody to Know: Native English Teaching in Japan (2003); Naming the Father: Narratives, Genealogies, and Explorations of Fatherhood in Modern and Contemporary Literature (2000); and Imagination Beyond Nation: Latin American Popular Culture (1999). Bueno has also published in periodicals in the United States, Brazil, and France.

Table of Contents

Without intending to diminish the importance of the Cinema Novo movement, Bueno's study is very much committed to the proposition that of equal importance are alternative film projects in Brazil. She argues that there is a fundamental ideological problem involved in seeing Brazilian filmmaking of the 1940-65 period only in terms of what may or may not have attracted international attention. Hers is the first monograph-length study of Amácio Mazzaropi, his important films, and the social and cultural parameters they involve, parameters that provide an important index to popular culture in Brazil at the time, particularly as it relates to São Paulo and changing patterns of urban constituencies.—David William Foster, Regents' Professor of Spanish and Women and Gender Studies, University of Arizona"This volume arrives at a prescient moment, when contemporary research on Brazilian cinema seeks novel approaches for a rapidly changing reality: that of a Latin American cultural and economic powerhouse at the outset of a new global order. Bueno's research on Mazzaropi makes a significant contribution to Latin American film studies by awarding long overdue attention to a modern-day master, filling a void in the national mapping of Brazilian identity." - Héctor Fernández L'Hoeste, professor of Latin American Culture, Georgia State University