We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 August 2023
Many films produced in the state of Pernambuco, Brazil, from the 1990s onwards present aesthetic features associated with the Manguebeat musical genre, especially those directed by the filmmakers who took part in the so-called Árido Movie movement. Music video was a key medium in the interaction of film and music in these films. In this chapter, I will examine musical moments in Pernambucan films as the result of a dialogue between film and music videos. Tensions between fiction and documentary, as well as pop references, will be explored by means of an intermedial method that enables reflections on historical developments and meanings, taking into account the film supports available in a moment of transition between analogue and digital technologies.
Manguebeat exploded in the media as a musical phenomenon in the 1990s, paving the way for its cinematic counterpart, Árido Movie. Two decades had elapsed in Pernambuco, a state located in the northeast of Brazil, without a single feature film being produced. Then, the film Baile perfumado (Perfumed Ball, Paulo Caldas and Lírio Ferreira, 1996) was released, becoming a landmark of the so-called Retomada do Cinema Brasileiro (Brazilian Film Revival), after the crisis in the early 1990s, when President Fernando Collor de Mello's government dismantled Embrafilme, the agency supporting film production and distribution in the country. In a bid to overcome the crisis, the interaction of cinema with other media became a way of getting up to speed with the political and social reality of Brazil.
Both phenomena – Manguebeat and Árido Movie – emerged in the city of Recife, Pernambuco's capital. At origin, both can be understood as a response to the city's problems, as can been gleaned from the manifesto ‘Caranguejos com cérebro’ (Crabs with Brains) (Vargas 2007: 66), launched in 1991 as a press release by Manguebeat member Fred Zero Quatro (from the band Mundo Livre S/A) and supported by several other musicians and artists from Recife. ‘Mangue’, meaning ‘mangrove’, is a feature of Recife's natural landscape and defines the three parts of the manifesto. Part I, ‘Mangue, the Concept’, refers to Recife's ecosystem, which is characterised by a web of rivers and the sea, metaphorically suggesting cultural hybridisation.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
