Brazilian Women’s Filmmaking: From Dictatorship to Democracy by Leslie L. Marsh (review)

Any study of a dark period of political unrest is almost certain to generate interest. By focusing this interest on the expressions of a group largely lacking power, Leslie L. Marsh, in Brazilian Women’s Filmmaking: From Dictatorship to Democracy, has brought a new perspective on a historical epoch and a novel way of addressing the issues in that epoch. The well-researched book is a result of seventeen oral interviews with Brazilian women filmmakers recorded between 2001 and 2005, and an analysis of more than 200 secondary sources. Interviews with Lúcia Murat, Tizuka Yamazaki, Sandra Werneck, Eunice Gutman, and Ana Carolina Teixeira Soares, amongst other prominent filmmakers, covered topics such as how Brazilian filmmakers negotiated with the military government and Embrafilme, the government’s film program; how they financed the films; and how they placed themselves in the socio-political context of the time. The book balances historical documents and the filmmakers’ views on their roles at the time, through interviews that bring insights to the documents, a brilliant combination of information colored with personal testimonies.

In the “Introduction,” Marsh writes a brief retrospective of Brazilian women filmmakers, describing how this history is intertwined with the larger Brazilian history. Marsh describes several eras: the early period from 1930 through the Cinema Novo era in the 1960s; women’s emergence after the 1964 coup d’état; political censorship of the seventies; the later dissolution of Embrafilme; and the redemocratization period of the last twenty years.

In Chapter 1, the author discusses the role of “Brazilian women’s filmmaking and the government during the 1970s and 1980s.” Marsh starts this chapter with a retrospective of before and after Embrafilme, dissolved in early 1990’s. Marsh goes on to discuss the role of state funded films—mostly made by male directors—and the paths that women filmmakers took at the time, either going abroad to learn or gaining experience and credibility by working with male directors as actresses or editors. A considerable amount of films made by women during this time were censured by having funds withheld, which often lead women filmmakers to make inexpensive films in order to build their careers. The chapter includes the crisis of the Brazilian film industry of the seventies and its renewal.

Chapter 2, “Contesting the boundaries of belonging in the films of Ana Carolina Teixeira Soares,” is entirely dedicated to this director. Marsh considers Soares the “foundational woman director of the Twenty Century Brazilian cinema,” but who is paradoxically one of the most neglected directors in most Brazilian Cinema studies. This chapter focuses on the artistic practices and political views of the filmmaker as an individual. The author investigates several of Soares’s productions, including analyses of Mar de Rosas (1977), Das tripas coração (1982), and Sonho de valsa (1987) in great detail. This feminist trilogy is a critique of the female condition and women’s rights, redefining their participation in Brazilian society, controlled by the political repression of the time. Ana Carolina’s work Mar de Rosas—considered a manifesto—is about alienation, repressive gender relations, and authoritarian politics. Marsh describes Das tripas coração as a surrealist meditation on masculine imaginary whereas Sonho de Valsa explores the female imagination.

Chapter 3 is reserved to “Brazilian women filmmaking of the 1980s.” Marsh intercalates excerpts from the directors’ interviews within her narrative. Among other directors, Marsh revisits Norma Bengell, Tereza Trautman, and Lúcia Murat. She analyzes Tizuka Yamazaki’s contribution with Gaijin (1980), Parayba mulher macho (1983), and Patriamada (1984). Yamazaki’s films recount Japanese immigration to Brazil, the Northeast of Brazil, and the fighting for free elections, a demonstration of wide social changes.

Chapter 4 is dedicated to “Widening the screen: Independent and alternative film and video from 1983–88.” In having an entire chapter to these filmmakers, Marsh attempts to do justice to the efforts of a select group of women filmmakers who contributed...