Abstract/Summary

Chapter 7 addresses the utilisation within film of art forms such as painting, theatre, poetry and music as a bridge or a ‘passage’ to political and social reality. Rather than focusing on individual artists and films, the chapter addresses a national phenomenon, more specifically, selected works by filmmakers from the states of São Paulo (Beto Brant and Tata Amaral) and Pernambuco (Cláudio Assis/Hilton Lacerda, Paulo Caldas/Marcelo Luna), in Brazil, who over the years have bridged across their regions’ very different social history and geographic situation by means of a shared artistic and political platform. Their films commingle in the desire to reassess questions of national identity and social inequality through an enhanced commitment to realism at the point of production.