Foundational Films. Cinema and Modernity in Brazil, 1889-1930

基础电影。

• 批准号: AH/J008354/1
• 负责人: Maite Conde
• 金额: $ 6.07万
• 依托单位: King's College London
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Fellowship
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2013 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FJ008354%2F1
• 关键词: Foundational; Films.; Cinema; Modernity; Brazil

The proposed research builds on work I have been conducting in recent years that explores early cinema in Brazil. I will publish a book-length monograph to examine this theme in more depth. Since the 1980s film studies scholars have embarked on new studiesof the silent years of cinema, looking at the relationship between the emergence of film and the broader culture of modernity. These studies have highlighted how physical transformations - the growth of the city, aesthetics changes, which included new cultures of display in museums, , as well as intellectual changes - new representations of life by the vanguard, were addressed by and intersected with the development of the cinema. 'Foundational Films' explores the cinema's invention of modern life in Brazil, looking at how the medium's arrival and early dissemination was imbricated with the modernizing years of the First Republic (1889-1930). In doing so it explores how film was implicated in a broader project that set out to construct a modern Brazilian identity, while at the same time seeking to maintain the country's traditional social and political contours. The two key questions of this research concern: 1) How was the cinema part of broader processes of modernization taking place during the First Republic? 2) How does exploring cinema's arrival and development during this period contribute to debates concerning cultural modernity in Brazil, revealing its cinematic dimensions?The project pursues these research questions through a book length monograph divided into four parts. Part 1 explores the relationship between early cinema and the city, focusing on the medium's imbrication in a project to transform Rio de Janeiro into a modern city. Part 2 examines ethnographic films made in the mid 1910s by Luiz Thomas Reis during an expedition to map the unknown regions and peoples of the Amazon basin. In doing so it traces relationships between film and anthropology, looking at how both projected notions of racial and cultural difference for a modern Brazil. Part 3 explores intersections ofsexual and racial politics in Brazilian intellectual and filmmaker's adoption of Hollywood's classical mode in the 1920s, linking it to their campaign to regulate the modern medium's mass reception and to broader concerns regarding governance; Part 4 uncovers a Brazilian cinematic modernism, analyzing vanguard movies made in the 1920s. Each of these parts illuminates the cinema's role in projecting a modern Brazil. This research is important for two reasons. First, the Brazilian case study offers new insights to early cinema scholarship and its link to the culture of modernity. To date, film scholars focusing on early cinema have not engaged with contexts beyond the Euro-American context, where assumptions about the film's inextricable link to industrial and technological advances must be rethought, and the medium's international dissemination must be considered. This project explores how Brazil's early cinema addressed impulses and models from abroad, recreating them according to the specific political and social context of the First Republic. Second, a cinematic engagement into the period of the First Republic provides much needed insights into the cinematic dimensions of modernity in Latin America, in general, and of Brazil, more specifically. Recent years have seen a proliferation of studies on Latin American film, which has raised key questions concerning modernity's spectacular qualities in the region. This work has largely tended to focus on more contemporary developments. By focusing on the lesser-known early years of Brazilian cinema, this project contributes to this growing area of research that has focused on the relationship between Latin American film and modernity, while taking it into a different historical direction.

拟议的研究建立在我近年来一直在进行的探索巴西早期电影的工作基础上。我将出版一本书长的专著，更深入地研究这个主题。自20世纪80年代以来，电影研究学者开始对电影的沉默岁月进行新的研究，研究电影的出现与更广泛的现代文化之间的关系。这些研究强调了物理转变-城市的发展，美学的变化，包括博物馆中的新展示文化，以及知识的变化-先锋对生活的新表现，是如何通过电影的发展来解决的。《基础电影》探讨了电影对巴西现代生活的创造，探讨了这种媒介的到来和早期传播是如何与第一共和国（1889-1930）的现代化岁月相重叠的。在这样做的过程中，它探讨了电影如何被牵连到一个更广泛的项目，该项目旨在构建一个现代的巴西身份，同时寻求保持该国的传统社会和政治轮廓。本研究关注的两个关键问题是：1）电影是如何在第一共和国时期发生的更广泛的现代化进程的一部分？2)探索电影在这一时期的到来和发展如何有助于关于巴西文化现代性的辩论，揭示其电影层面？该项目通过一本书的篇幅分为四个部分的专著来探讨这些研究问题。第一部分探讨了早期电影与城市之间的关系，重点是媒介在将里约热内卢转变为现代城市的项目中的重叠。第二部分考察了1910年代中期路易斯·托马斯·雷斯在一次探险中拍摄的民族志电影，这次探险是为了绘制亚马逊盆地未知地区和民族的地图。在此过程中，它追溯了电影与人类学之间的关系，探讨了两者如何为现代巴西投射种族和文化差异的概念。第三部分探讨了20世纪20年代巴西知识分子和电影制片人采用好莱坞经典模式的性和种族政治的交叉点，将其与他们规范现代媒体大众接受的运动以及对治理的更广泛关注联系起来;第四部分揭示了巴西电影现代主义，分析了20世纪20年代制作的先锋电影。每一个部分都阐明了电影在投射现代巴西方面的作用。这项研究之所以重要，有两个原因。首先，巴西的案例研究为早期电影学术及其与现代文化的联系提供了新的见解。迄今为止，专注于早期电影的电影学者还没有接触到欧美背景之外的背景，其中关于电影与工业和技术进步密不可分的联系的假设必须重新思考，并且必须考虑媒体的国际传播。这个项目探讨了巴西早期电影如何处理来自国外的冲动和模式，并根据第一共和国的特定政治和社会背景重新创造它们。第二，对第一共和国时期的电影参与提供了对拉丁美洲现代性的电影维度的迫切需要的见解，更具体地说，是巴西。近年来，对拉丁美洲电影的研究激增，这提出了关于该地区现代性壮观品质的关键问题。这项工作在很大程度上倾向于关注更现代的发展。通过关注巴西电影鲜为人知的早期，该项目有助于这一日益增长的研究领域，该领域专注于拉丁美洲电影与现代性之间的关系，同时将其纳入不同的历史方向。