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Example research essay topic: Women Role In Third World Latin Part 1 - 2,145 words

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Women's Role in Third World Latin Cinema Shortly after the first screening in 1895, film as an art began to proliferate in areas all over the world. Now, movies are carefully constructed works of art combining both the visual and aural realms of human perception. When discussing the history of Brazilian film, though, it is impossible to separate the art of film from the social and political text of Brazil's history. Unlike the United States, Brazil historically confronted more problems with the new art form: financial difficulties affecting production and screening, as well as political problems like censorship. To examine where Brazilian cinema is today, one must go back further than the revolutionary Cinema Novo.

One must begin with the Golden Age of early Brazilian film and move through the darker periods, when Brazil was invaded with foreign language films. Still today, Brazil can not compete financially with the massive profit-hounding expertise of Hollywood. The interesting result of these difficulties is the constant dialogue between Brazilian film and the Brazilian people. While the United States also has its period movements: the studio years, the great depression films (giant monster movies), and anti-science - they are less focused. To a certain degree, censorship, while ultimately destructive, has actively directed the Brazilian cinematic text. "Brazilian filmmakers have never enjoyed the luxury of regarding themselves as "apolitical." (P. 56 BC) Therefore, by looking at Brazil's cinema history, it is impossible to ignore the drama occurring behind the scenes. On July 8, 1896, the first Brazilian film screening was held in Rio de Janeiro.

By 1898, Alfonso Secret began circulating films and film equipment. He filmed, much like France's Lumber Brothers, public events and other similarly interesting occurrences. This early, many Brazilian one-reel films were made, and suffered very little competition from the foreign markets of Europe and the United States. It wasn't until later that cinema became truly popular. In 1908 or late 1907, the Bela Epoca of Brazilian Cinema began. This Golden Age (owing much to the better electrical capacity of Brazil's cities which allowed easier film screenings) brought in many upper class Brazilians.

Giuseppe Labanca and Antonio Leal began the company Photo-Cinematographic a Brasilera, which not only produced films in Brazil, but distributed film equipment. The PCB's (not to be confused with the Partido Community Brasileiro) first major success was also Brazil's first major success: Leal's Os Estranguladores ("The Stranglers"). This film was made in 1908 and depicted a famous crime that had occurred in Rio. Os Estranguladores' three reels was screened and re-screened, becoming one of many popular crime films. Leal's A Mala Sinatra ("The Sinister Suitcase") is another popular example of this new genre of silent films. In this popular golden age of Brazilian films, it was the Brazilian life that was depicted.

Not only were local crimes popular topics, but films about football - "soccer" -, and Carnival were also made. The most popular film of the Bela Epoca was Alberto Botelho's Paz e Amor ("Peace and Love") This film was "a lighthearted-critique of national politics and social mores of Rio de Janeiro. " (p. 21 BC) This intellectual peace poked fun at the contemporary (1910) Brazilian President Nilo Pecanha who proclaimed that he would rule in peace and love. The subject of the film deals with the fictional character of Olin I, a not too subtle anagram of Nilo. This film's popularity further develops an interesting separation between the film audience of the United States and of Brazil. U. S.

audiences consisted of the same working class people that frequented old vaudeville shows, while it was mostly Brazilian upper class citizens that went to see the films of the Bela Epoca. In Brazil, from the very beginning, film was an intellectual past-time. The popularity of Paz e Amor, with its social and political relevance, reveals this to be true. This phenomenon set the Brazilian Bela Epoca for its great fall to foreign invasion in 1911. With a cinema directed towards an elite, "Brazilian films were forced off the screens by North America and European products" (p. 22 BC) that were more aimed at the masses.

In retrospect, one must keep in mind that between 1900 and 1912, Brazil was not completely devoid of foreign films. Johnson emphasizes the relationship as a "peaceful coexistence between Brazilian cinema and foreign cinemas" (p. 27 FIB) at this time. "There was plenty of exhibition time available for both foreign and national films, a situation that would not occur again for several decades. " (p. 27 FIB) So, while Brazilian cinema was appealing to the elite, the foreigners easily came in and appealed to the masses, forcing the Brazilian cinema deep into financial limbo. For the next twenty years, Brazil struggled to get back onto its feet. While documentary and news films were common, the fiction film was much less common. The foreign invasion placed competition out of the Brazilian pocketbook's reach. The obvious result being a trend towards emulation.

Early in this period, Luis de Barros produced his own fiction films based on the romance novels of Jose de Alen car, but the bulk of films were regional: being produced in and concerning a specific region. Later, The Escola de Artes Cinematograficas Azzurri would begin a new trend in educating potential Brazilian directors, leaving young and creative artist to make the films of the future. The Escola de Artes Cinematograficas Azzurri began from the bits and pieces of what was earlier Brazil's most reliable base for film production: the news-film. Being interested in Brazilian, rather than foreign news, this non-fiction market still had an audience amidst the influx of foreign fiction films.

Gilberto Rossi was one of these filmmakers: producing and shooting his own propaganda and news films that lead to the formation of the Escola. With the formation of the Brazilian school, money and students brought new interest to the art of the Brazilian fiction film. Other such schools began to spring up all over Brazil. With the Escola up and running, Rossi collaborated with Jose Medina to make several fiction films.

After several successes in the Brazilian box offices, Medina and Rossi would make their only studio film in 1929: Fragments da Vida ("Fragments of Life"). "Erich von Stroheim reportedly praised the film when he saw it at the Fourth Centennial Celebration of the City of Sao Paulo. " (p. 23 BC) With such successes, Brazilian Cinema slowly found itself recovering from foreign products, but only slightly. One side effect of the invasion, was the ensuing influence. The late twenties and early thirties were a time of parody and mimicry. The Brazilian western, following the United States genre, became popular, often going as far as using English names for the characters.

European film didn't go unnoticed either. The avant-guard films consisting of rapid cutting and dialectic montage became very influential for filmmakers like Mario Peixoto, whose film Limite set the standard of "the Brazilian experimental film. " In 1930 at the age of nineteen, Peixoto made Limite but quickly pulled it from the screens. While this unusual action made it difficult for many people to see, one of those people was the great Soviet director Service Eisenstein. Eisenstein calls the film "an extremely beautiful film which one should submit oneself to right from the very first moments, as to the agonizing chords of a synthetic and pure language of cinema. " (p. 309 BC) Three years later, Humberto Mauro would produce his masterpiece Ganga Bruta ("Brutal Gang"), which would later spark the Cinema Novo.

Ganga Bruta, about a man that tries to continue his life after murdering his wife, relied heavily upon both German expressionism and Soviet montage. This decade of pseudo-mimicry had somehow achieved the opposite effect. In attempting to compete with the foreign films of Lang, Eisenstein, and D. W. Griffith, Brazilian filmmakers made films that followed very similar trends.

In doing so, Mauro and Peixoto both created distinctly original Brazilian films, though definitely under the avant-garde movement. Salles Gomes calls this phenomenon, Brazil's "creative incapacity for copying. " (p. 25 BC) This groundwork of avant-guard silent film would set the stage for a new movement in Brazilian confidence. With the invention of sound added to the visual art, the Brazilian film industry would have as close to a fresh start at recapturing the Brazilian audience. "According to legend, sound unexpectedly descended on the film industry from the skies, like an ancient god out of a machine, " (p. 185 SHM) in 1927. Not much later in Brazil, the Chanchada struck. With the emergence of sound, everyone within the creative film community simultaneously lost their minds. For some reason, now that movie-goers could hear, filmmakers assumed that all that wanted to hear was singing and music.

So, worldwide, the musical struck. So long to montage and expressionism, and hello broadway... and incidentally, Carmen Miranda. Carmen Miranda began as a popular radio and record star, but quickly became a global celebrity. Fifty-years later, if we don't remember Carmen personally, we at least remember her fruit-topped hat. The chanchada became popular with Adhemar Gonzaga's Alo, Alo, Brasil in 1935 and Alo, Alo, Carnaval the following year.

Part American musical and part Brazilian comedy, the chanchada idealized Brazil as a tropic of pleasure parading down the streets of Rio. Hollywood, quickly realizing its opportunity, picked up Miranda and the chanchada, and carried it as far is it could. With the birth of sound, Brazil had found its distinguishing mark - music. While the chanchada did remain popular for several decades, with hundreds of examples, it slowly declined into vulgarity, and became the pornochanchada by the 1970 's. But with its hopes, its misfortunes were also exposed. The chanchada, though popular, was not popular enough to beat out the foreign films (now dubbed in Portuguese), still dominating Brazilian markets.

It also left the giant taste of Brazil's tropical stereotype in the mouths of the world: "The image of Brazil, for many non-Brazilians, is a bewildering potpourri of piranha-infested waters, samba and romance, carnival and coffee, Black Orpheus and Carmen Miranda. " (p. 351 BC) This "vulgarity" of the chanchada instigated the creation of the Vera Cruz Film Company and studio in the 1940 's. In 1949, the already prestigious Alberto Cavalcanti founded the Vera Cruz studios. Cavalcanti's idea was to bring the glitzy perfection of Hollywood's studio system to Brazil. In its short lived incarnation, Vera Cruz produced 18 films. Although it became the first film company in Brazil to consistently produce films, it was a financial failure and went bankrupt in 1954. Its success in films and failure financially, are integral in understanding the distinct road Brazil would take.

Cavalcanti's success with Vera Cruz was discovered world-wide in the film O Cangaciero, directed by Lima Barreto in 1953. "O Cangaciero is one of the most famous films in the history of Brazilian cinema and one of the few to have successfully reached a foreign public. (p. 277 BC) Having won two prizes at the Can film festival, O Cangaciero was Vera Cruz's only financial success, but this late in the game, not even global recognition could pay the debt Vera Cruz had accumulated. On the other hand, part of the Vera Cruz goal had been realized. O Cangaciero was the icing on a technical cake. Cavalcanti had indeed brought Brazil out of the technical third-world and into first-world production.

With a studio system, the seamless perfection of the Hollywood film was achieved. Better camera technique and more advanced editing options like the dissolve rendered the previously choppy independent Brazilian film style suddenly smooth. The positive result was world recognition and local instigation of other smaller Brazilian production companies. In fact, the vacant lots of Vera Cruz were quickly bought by another company, Brasil Filmes, which hoped to achieve the financial success Vera Cruz failed at.

The negative side of Vera Cruz was found ironically in the technical success it discovered. The realization that such studio products were possible set a new standard to Brazilian cinema, a standard of technical perfection that could not be upheld (as Vera Cruz proved with its bankruptcy) in a third world country. The independent Brazilian filmmakers would have that much more difficult of a time getting their smaller films off the ground. As you can see, "Vera Cruz was flawed in its very conception, " being an "attempt to create First-world cinema in a Third-world country. " (p. 28 BC) The expenses of such a product were much greater than profits, and Vera Cruz folded in 1954. This failure didn't stop Alberto Cavalcanti, who would go on to create several successful films, and it didn't stop companies like Brasil Filmes from reaching a certain level of popular success. On the other hand, the failure provoked some of the greatest Brazilian filmmakers that ever lived to form a new Brazilian cinema...


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Research essay sample on Women Role In Third World Latin Part 1

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