A difficult industrialization
American domination began to take hold in the 1910s, with networks of cinemas in all major cities stifling Brazilian cinema over the years. The government took the drastic step of taxing the broadcasting of foreign films, in order to encourage local production above all else. The 1920s saw the birth of regional cycles, highlighting groups of local productions, with works from Recife, Porto Alegre and Campinas, among others, and enabling national production to define itself and exist outside the dominant Rio-São Paulo axis.
Talking films arrived in Brazil in 1929, the same year as Luiz de Barros' Acabaram-se otários in Hollywood. With the new customs tax measures, as well as the difficulty posed by the English language, Hollywood cinema initially retreated, and the way was paved for domestic production. Cinedia and Brasil Vita Films were among the most important structures created in the early 1930s. Humberto Mauro directed his masterpiece Ganga Bruta (1933) for Cinédia. But Hollywood, with its advertising and investment in theatrical equipment, redoubled its pressure on Brazilian production, which fell back in 1934, a blank year in which no national production was recorded.
Talking pictures were a more costly industry, and the Brazilian film economy had trouble supporting their development alone. Major studios like Cinédia began copying the American model, with musicals.
Cinema Novo
Influenced by Italian neo-realism and then the French new wave, a young generation is appropriating the codes of this realistic cinema, shot with the means at hand. Their aim: to show the reality of living conditions in Brazil, especially in the poorest areas. Peanut traders are the main characters in Rio, 40° (1955) by Nelson Pereira dos Santo, the initiator of the movement, which continued in the 1960s with Carlos Diegues and Glauber Rocha, who won two Cannes awards: Terra em Transe (International Critics' Prize, 1967) and Antonio Das Mortes (Director's Prize, 1969). It was the consecration of Cinema Novo.
Despite this prosperous period, Brazilian cinema was to face new difficulties linked to the country's political and economic situation. The military junta that came to power set up structures to better control film production, while reinstating taxes on foreign films. Embrafilme was born - an enterprise designed to support official national production while overshadowing "Udigrudi", the underground cinema that openly criticizes the ruling military.
Crisis and renewal
By the 1980s, domestic production was on the rise, but this was without taking into account the severe economic recession that hit the country in 1982. Many Brazilians could no longer afford to go to the movies, and exhibitors campaigned for more foreign films to be shown. To keep their businesses afloat, they began showing mainly erotic productions: "pornochanchadas". National auteur cinema was on the verge of extinction.
In 1990, the democratically elected president Fernando Collor brought the military junta to an end, but his government, in a bid to combat corruption and dismantle the last links of the dictatorship, unfortunately dismantled all the public institutions responsible for supporting film production. In the last year of his presidency, only one film was produced, by Walter Salles.
The next government, however, turned the tables. A 1993 law providing tax incentives for investment in production, and Riofilme, an organization of the city of Rio, gave new vigor to production. Talented filmmakers have emerged, such as Walter Salles(Central do Brasil, Golden Bear at Berlin in 1998, then Carnets de voyage in 2003, a biopic of Ernesto "Che" Guevara's youth), Fernando Meirelles (City of God, about Rio's eponymous favela, an international success, or L'Aveuglement in 2008), Karim Ainouz(Madame Satã, 2002), or the controversial José Padilha who, with Tropa de Elite (2007, Golden Bear at Berlin), described with cold realism the methods of the special forces of the Carioca police. Kleber Mendonça Filho distinguished himself with Les Bruits de Recife (2012), which portrays Recife through the sounds that give it its rhythm and pulse. In 2016, he brought this to fruition with Aquarius, a masterful work that denounces the violence of land capitalism through a woman's struggle to keep her home. In 2020, he will direct Bacurau , which will be a great success in France and many other countries.
Reconnecting with the general public
The Brazilian audiovisual scene is opening up to TV series, with the remarkable release on Netflix of 3%, a dystopian science-fiction tale that nonetheless highlights very real issues in Brazilian society. The ever-widening gap between the working classes and the national elite. In a not-so-distant future, the population is separated into two groups: only 3% of the "mainland", grouped together in a city resembling a futuristic favela, will have access to an island where they can lead a privileged life in unspoiled surroundings.
Brazil also boasts a leading figure in animated cinema, Carlos Saldanha, who, in addition to the various parts of Ice Age (2002-2016), is responsible for the Rio series (2011, 2014). He is directing one of the chapters in the Brazilian adaptation of the Paris, je t'aime franchise : Rio eu te amo (2014), and has also been producing the fantasy series Cidade Invisivel, broadcast on Netflix, since 2021. Brazil is also an ideal location for international co-productions. Well-known films include the second part ofOSS 117 (Rio ne répond plus), and John Boorman's The Emerald Forest (1985). It was also here that Werner Herzog, continuing his South American adventure, shot his famous Fitzcarraldo (1982). As a side-effect of former President Bolsonaro's term in office, Brazil's tradition of committed cinema has found a new lease of life, but the limited funding granted to cinema by the former government curtailed Brazilian creativity. The new Minister of Culture, Bahian singer Margareth Menezes, seems to be rapidly regaining her former dynamism.
