Gendered landscapes: expectations and limitations of marginalized women in Brazilian cinema

Over the years, Brazilian cinema has added many internationally critically acclaimed films to the world of cinema. While some critics would argue that Brazilian cinema itself has established itself as a key player in comparison to other national cinemas, Brazilian cinema, over time has established a definitive set of characteristics as well as genres that have made it stand out in its own right. The trajectory of Brazilian cinema over time has always been tightly linked with the unstable governmental and social issues. This is especially true of the Cinema Novo movement of the 1960s. Therefore, “what is generally true of film—the impossibility of separating filmic text from social context- is perhaps more obvious true in the case of Brazilian cinema” (Johnson and Stam 56). This characteristic has endured the development of Brazilian national cinema and still holds true today with many productions covering a wide variety of social commentary. Contemporary Brazilian films are projecting similar themes that center themselves around particular Brazilian landscapes which encapsulate within them certain socio-historical characteristics. Such landscapes (in this case: the favela, the sertão, and the urban periphery) depicted within these films create unique sets of limitations and expectations for the people living within them. Particularly, this thesis will take a gendered lens to analyze these differences and similarities within three Brazilian films, of which the protagonist is female, looking at how gender is depicted within these marginalized landscapes