Film series: Brazil! Brazil! A century of cinema

Art Gallery Cinema presents the most comprehensive retrospectives of Brazilian film ever staged in Australia.

From 1940s melodrama to avant-garde milestones and modern rom-coms, Brazil! Brazil! offers a sweeping journey through a vibrant national cinema. Across 20 films, expect bold comedies alongside tales of revolutionary struggle, cult horror and scorched outlaw dramas that resist exoticised visions of a ‘tropical paradise’.

This century-long retrospective takes us back to an era when Brazilian filmmakers began to tell distinctively local stories. We see a dreamlike silent masterpiece (Limite, screening with a live score by Worlds Only), and witness the reworking of popular Hollywood genres such as musical comedies (Let me play the buffoon). From the outset, Brazilian filmmakers embrace a spirit of cultural cannibalism, playfully imitating but also reimagining foreign influences with defiant, homegrown aesthetics.

From the 1960s to the 1980s, the turbulence of the repressive military dictatorship inspired some of the nation’s most remarkable cinema. With only ‘a camera in the hand, an idea in the head’ (Glauber Rocha), filmmakers created iconic political allegories (The guns, Land in anguish), underground dramas (The Devil Queen, Pixote) and works of feminist film, including a risqué tale of polyamory (The men I had) and an adaptation of beloved Brazilian author Clarice Lispector’s final novel, The hour of the star.

More recently, Brazilian cinema has gained worldwide acclaim, led by the success of directors such as Kleber Mendonça Filho (Neighbouring sounds) and the award-winning actor Grace Passô (The day I met you). The series concludes with a spotlight on the work of André Novais Oliveira, a key voice in a new wave of Black Brazilian cinema. Don’t miss this rare opportunity to engage with a dynamic film culture deserving greater attention.

Guest curated by Stefan Solomon, senior lecturer in media studies (Macquarie University).