From the Banal to the Indispensable: <em>Pornochanchada</em> and <em>Cinema Novo</em> during the Brazilian Dictatorship (1964-1985)

Abstract

The period of the dictatorship in Brazil was marked by the convergence of two cinematic movements: on the one hand, the erotic films produced in the Boca do Lixo neighbourhood in Sâo Paulo, which gave rise to the pornochanchada; and on the other, Cinema Novo, which turned Brazilian cinema into an international intellectual phenomenon. An analysis of Brazilian cinema during the dictatorship from a historical perspective reveals that both these movements brought about a revolution of ideology and of form that neither the censors nor their tools of repression could restrain. However, the importance of erotic cinema in the creation of a collective consciousness that rejected the regime has been underestimated in comparison with Cinema Novo. Concealed behind the eroticism of these productions there was also a struggle based on the affirmation of sexuality as a path towards freedom that often succeeded in outwitting the censors, constituting a cinematic process that is indispensable today for the construction of the memory of those years.