Local filmmaking in Brazil: Place, politics and Pernambuco’s new cinema

This article looks at the recent cinema from the Brazilian state of Pernambuco, arguably the most visible of the local cinemas that have gained prominence in Brazil in the last two decades. For most of the twentieth century, local filmmaking remained somewhat marginal to Brazilian cinema, often overshadowed by metropolises such as Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. By contrast, the surge of local filmmaking in recent years has been key to the growth of Brazilian cinema after a period of near stagnation in the early 1990s. This article offers a partial survey of Pernambuco’s new cinema, focusing specifically on the notion of place. Drawing on the work of Doreen Massey, it proposes a relational reading of locality that de-emphasizes territorial fixity and associates place with social experience. The article relies on this relational approach to argue that Pernambuco’s cinema has revitalized Brazil’s tradition of political filmmaking.