Maite Conde – författare

Consuming Visions explores the relationship between cinema and writing in early twentieth-century Brazil, focusing on how the new and foreign medium of film was consumed by a literary society in the throes of modernization. Maite Conde places this relationship in the specific context of turn-of-the-century Rio de Janeiro, which underwent a radical transformation to a modern global city, becoming a concrete symbol of the country''s broader processes of change and modernization. Analyzing an array of literary texts, from journalistic essays and popular women''s novels to anarchist treatises and vaudeville plays, the author shows how the writers'' encounters with the cinema were consistent with the significant changes taking place in the city.

The arrival and initial development of the cinema in Brazil were part of the new urban landscape in which early Brazilian movies not only articulated the processes of the city''s modernization but also enabled new urban spectators—women, immigrants, a new working class, and a recently liberated slave population—to see, believe in, and participate in its future. In the process, these early movies challenged the power of the written word and of Brazilian writers, threatening the hegemonic function of writing that had traditionally forged the contours of the nation''s cultural life. An emerging market of consumers of the new cultural phenomena—popular theater, the department store, the factory, illustrated magazines—reflected changes that not only modernized literary production but also altered the very life and everyday urban experiences of the population. Consuming Visions is an ambitious and engaging examination of the ways in which mass culture can become an agent of intellectual and aesthetic transformation.

Paulo Emílio Salles Gomes (1916–77) is revered in Brazil as the first ardent defender, promoter and theorist of Brazilian cinema. A film professor, critic and historian, his dedication to cinema shaped a generation of influential film critics in his home country, and set the foundations for the serious study of film in Brazil. For the first time in English, this book brings together a selection of his essays for an English-speaking audience, with detailed explanatory introductions to each section for readers unfamiliar with the context of the writings of Salles Gomes.

By blending together ruminations on global and national cinema, as well as avant-garde film and popular movies, the collection shows how the defence and promotion of a national cinema has been forged through dialogues with international trends, informed by commercial influences, and shaped by global and national political contexts. The book thus introduces readers to the international dimensions of Salles Gomes’s engagements with film, and in doing so reassesses the locatedness of his formulations on national cinema and signals their international dimensions.