Saudade in Brazilian Cinema

Jack A. Draper III is the author of Forró and Redemptive Regionalism from the Brazilian Northeast: Popular Music in a Culture of Migration, as well as a variety of publications focusing on emotion, gender, and social class in Brazilian cinema.

'The emotion known in Portuguese as saudade—here glossed as nostalgic longing—has long been recognized in the artistic and philosophical traditions of Lusophone culture. Draper studies the cinematic representations of saudade in selected films produced in Brazil during the last 60-some years. In his theoretically meaty introduction, Draper situates his work within the field of emotion studies understood as “an emergent field of cultural studies and … an inherently interdisciplinary, culturalist and social-constructionist approach to the study of emotion.” Draper’s research is interdisciplinary, wide-ranging, and up-to-date; he fruitfully draws on insights and methodologies developed by such prominent scholars as Laura Marks and Svetlana Boym. He devotes most of the chapters to analysis of saudade in specific films, works ranging from the classic Macunaíma (1969) to less-familiar documentary features, e.g., Petra Costa’s Elena (2012). Specific topics examined include, for example, neo-romantic rurality in the films of Humberto Mauro and the Bachelardian “Ophelia complex” in Elena. Draper’s analyses are generally insightful and original. . . . Recommended.'

• Introduction - Rethinking Saudade and CinemaJack A. Draper III Traditional Agrarian Saudade and the Rancho Alegre and Vera Cruz StudiosJack A. Draper III 1960s Brazilian Cinema and Narratives of Rural-Urban MigrationJack A. Draper III Cinematic Visions of Brazilian TV on the Road and in the CloudsJack A. Draper III The Ghost of Home in Brazilian Cinema of the 1990sJack A. Draper III Transnational and Postnational Emotional Vectors in Contemporary Brazilian CinemaJack A. Draper III Haptic and Optical Cinematic Approaches to Childhood MemoriesJack A. Draper III Conclusion - The Waxing and Waning of Saudade in Cinematic SkiesJack A. Draper III