Century of Brazilian Documentary Film

Darlene J. Sadlier is a professor emerita of Spanish and Portuguese at Indiana University. She is the author of Brazil Imagined: 1500 to the Present, Americans All: Good Neighbor Cultural Diplomacy in World War II, and The Portuguese-Speaking Diaspora: Seven Centuries of Literature and the Arts.

• AcknowledgmentsIntroductionChapter 1. The Jungle and the City: Modernity in Two 1920s DocumentariesChapter 2. Government Educational Shorts, Bandit Footage, and Vera Cruz DocumentariesChapter 3. Documentary and Cinema NovoChapter 4. Documentary, Dictatorship, and RepressionChapter 5. Biographies of a Sort, Part I (1974–1989)Chapter 6. Documenting IdentityChapter 7. Biographies of a Sort, Part II (1994–2016)Chapter 8. The City and the CountrysideEpilogue: A Country in CrisisFilmographyNotesWorks CitedIndex

Darlene Sadlier weaves rich descriptions of films with production histories and the histories of distribution, exhibition, and reception against the backdrop of shifting political and economic circumstances in Brazil. This will be an important reference for students and educators who may be unfamiliar with Brazil and documentary filmmaking.— Leslie L. Marsh, author of Branding Brazil: Transforming Citizenship on ScreenThis book represents a major contribution to the English-language literature on both Brazilian cinema and the history of documentary.  While a handful of the films discussed here have been analyzed in existing English-language studies, the majority have not, and this publication therefore significantly broadens and deepens the understanding of one of South America's most important national film traditions as well as that of nonfiction cinema internationally.— Jesse Lerner, author of The Maya of Modernism: Art, Architecture, and FilmMonumental...The future of documentary production in Brazil is uncertain as is the nature of the current political process. Nonetheless, Sadlier's book offers valuable insight into better understanding the history and inextricability of both.— NACLAWith this volume, Sadlier...fills a gap in English-language scholarship on film by providing a clearly organized historical survey of documentary filmmaking in Brazil over the last hundred years...Sadlier's prose is eminently readable, and the scholarly apparatus is robust…Highly recommended.— CHOICESadlier has a remarkable ability to synopsize and contextualize films . . . Engrossing from beginning to end, A Century of Brazilian Documentary Film belongs on the bookshelf (or in the digital files) of anyone interested in Latin America's geography, history, politics, sociology, and popular culture.— Journal of Latin American GeographyDarlene Sadlier's A Century of Brazilian Documentary: From Nationalism to Protest offers an accessible guide to the nonfiction output of one of Latin America's most vibrant and prolific audiovisual industries, the most wide-ranging published in English to date. The book's organization is at once chronological and thematic, which allows it to cover a tremendous amount of ground while anchoring the reader by grouping its detailed case studies around particular themes or approaches . . .A Century of Brazilian Documentary [Film] will find a place on the bookshelves of scholars and students of Brazilian cinema, culture, and history as well as documentary film and media, and serve as a valuable reference for years to come.— H-Net Reviews