slides on national allegories: the family and the nation

Rachel RandallSpecial Subject Brazilian Cinema

3rd February 2014

National AllegoriesNational Allegories:: The family & the nation The family & the nation

Click a picture, and then click the Format Picture tab to create your own frames and make picture corrections such as adjusting contrast and brightness or cropping the picture for just the right look.

Grande Otelo of ‘Macunaíma’ and Eliana Macedo, another star of the ‘chanchada’.

Mário de Andrade and his well-known novel ‘Macunaíma’

(1928)

José Louzeiro’s romance-reportagem:

‘A Infância dos Mortos’ (1977)

Click a picture, and then click the Format Picture tab to create your own frames and make picture corrections such as adjusting contrast and brightness or cropping the picture for just the right look.

Click a picture, and then click the Format Picture tab to create your own frames and make picture corrections such as adjusting contrast and brightness or cropping the picture for just the right look.

Salles has described his motivation behind the film as the idea that:

‘if a letter can really alter somebody’s perception of the world, then what happens if a letter doesn’t reach its destiny? And somehow it had to do with Brazil, who hadn’t reached a destiny during those 25 years of military dictatorship. I really felt like, maybe this woman who hasn’t been sending the letters, Dora, the central character, maybe the journey into discovering what country she is from, maybe going into the centre of Brazil. Because ‘Central Station’ in Portuguese is ‘Central do Brasil’, which is not only the name of the station but also the centre, the heart of the country. So it has a double meaning. And for me, the search that the little kid does for his father in the film is really the search for a country. In Portuguese actually the words for father and the word for country are almost the same. Father is pai, and country is país.’

Michelangelo, ‘Pietà’ (1499)

Dora’s transformation into the archetypal mother:A Mãe de Deus das Candeias.

Also known as: Nossa Senhora da Luz, and Nossa

Senhora das Candeias.