Cinema Novo
| Years active | 1960 to early 1970s |
|---|---|
| Country | Brazil |
| Major figures | Glauber Rocha, Nelson Pereira dos Santos, Paulo Cesar Saraceni, Joaquim Pedro de Andrade, Leon Hirszman, Carlos Diegues, Ruy Guerra, Arnaldo Jabor |
| Influences | Italian Neorealism, French New Wave, Soviet cinema |
Cinema Novo is a genre and movement of film noted for its emphasis on social equality and intellectualism that rose to prominence in Brazil during the 1960s and 1970s. It means "New Cinema" in Portuguese, which is the official language of Brazil, the movement's "home". Cinema Novo formed in response to class and racial unrest both in Brazil and the United States. Influenced by Italian neorealism and French New Wave, films produced under the ideology of Cinema Novo opposed traditional Brazilian cinema, which consisted primarily of musicals, comedies and Hollywood-style epics.Glauber Rocha is widely regarded as Cinema Novo's most influential filmmaker. Today, the movement is often divided into three sequential phases that differ in tone, style and content.
Cinema Novo should not be confused with Novo Cinema (sometimes also referred to as "Cinema Novo"), a film movement that arose in Portugal between 1963 and 1974.
In the 1950s, Brazilian cinema was dominated by chanchada (musicals, often comedic and "cheap"), big-budget epics that imitated the style of Hollywood, and "'serious' cinema" that Cinema Novo filmmaker Carlos Diegues characterizes as "sometimes cerebral and often ridiculously pretentious." This traditional cinema was supported by foreign producers, distributors and exhibitors. As the decade ended, young Brazilian filmmakers protested films they perceived as made in "bad taste and ... sordid commercialism, ... a form of cultural prostitution" that relied on the patronage of "an illiterate and impoverished Brazil."
Cinema Novo became increasingly political. In the 1960s, Brazil was producing the most political cinema in South America. Brazil therefore became the natural “home of the Cinema Novo (New Cinema) movement”. Cinema Novo rose to prominence at the same time that progressive Brazilian Presidents Juscelino Kubitschek and later João Goulart took office and began to influence Brazilian popular culture. But it was not until 1959 or 1960 that 'Cinema Novo' emerged as a label for the movement. According to Randal Johnson and Robert Stam, Cinema Novo officially began in 1960, with the start of its first phase.
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