Affective Realism and the Brand New Brazilian Cinema

The restricted vocabulary that is often applied to discuss Contemporary Brazilian Cinema (aesthetics of hunger, marginality, national allegory, identity, bad consciousness) reveals a sort of generalizing approach that ignores the films’ singularities and overlooks diverse affiliations. Works by young Brazilian filmmakers such as Irmãos Pretti, Eduardo Valente, Rodrigo Siqueira, and Sérgio Borges are a real challenge for the critic inasmuch as they escape this vocabulary and propose other questions. The films made by this young generation bypass traditional themes like urban violence and historical revisionism, thus demanding we rethink the political potency of Brazilian Cinema. Moreover, these films are not concerned with images of Brazil, pointing out to a post-identity politics that go beyond narratives of nation, class, or gender. This proposal aims at discussing this Brand New Brazilian Cinema (Novísssimo Cinema Brasileiro) and its affective realism. No longer a referent for a sociological truth about Brazilian society, realism is taken as something that the image does, i.e., as an affect that challenges the viewer’s response-ability. This paper discusses two films (No meu lugar [Eye of the Storm, Eduardo Valente, 2009] and O céu sobre os ombros [The Sky Above, Sérgio Borges, 2010]) in order to assess the political relevance of the notion of realism, in its relationship with affect