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The first book-length account of Brazilian science fiction cinema.
This book offers a pioneering critical history of Brazilian science fiction (SF) cinema, from its first appearances in the mid-twentieth century to the present. Though frequently overlooked by scholars, SF cinema from the Global South has reinvigorated the genre in recent decades. In this comprehensive study-the first of its kind in either English or Portuguese-Alfredo Suppia draws out the unique features and universal resonance of SF film in Brazil, a country that has fittingly been called "the land of the future." In Suppia's analysis, Brazilian SF stems from and responds to a long history of inequality in which everyday reality has often resembled a movie-like dystopia. Analyzing both short and feature films in the context of social, political, and economic transformations, Suppia rethinks SF film in general from a southern perspective.
"Science fiction is a burgeoning field in a number of film cultures beyond the Anglophone canon. This book makes a significant contribution to our understanding of how SF film has evolved in Brazil and how the Brazilian case study can nuance broader discussions. Suppia clearly knows his stuff, deftly drawing analogies, comparisons, and contrasts with films from the US and across Latin America." — Stephanie Dennison, author of Remapping Brazilian Film Culture in the Twenty-First Century
"Brazilian Science Fiction Film is the first comprehensive Anglophone treatment of its subject, and a quite masterful one. With confidence and ease, Suppia guides the reader through shifting political and social contexts, industrial and institutional developments, and other currents in Brazilian cinema and prose SF. In it you will find not just films you have never heard of, but whole new subgenres. Highly recommended." — Mark Bould, author of The Anthropocene Unconscious: Climate Catastrophe Culture
"One of Suppia's key arguments is that science fiction elements have often appeared in films that are not considered 'science fiction' and that these elements are equally important to the social, cultural, and political significance of Brazilian film history. The book cuts across themes of race, gender, class, sexuality, and a host of other important topics, showing how Indigenous, Afro-Brazilian, and queer futurisms, for example, are part of this science fiction film history." — Andrew C. Rajca, author of Dissensual Subjects: Memory, Human Rights, and Postdictatorship in Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction or Unidentified Filmic Objects: Understanding Science Fiction in Brazil
1. Laughing at the Future: On the Origins of Brazilian SF Cinema in Comedy and Satire
2. Subliminal Waves: Brazilian SF Cinema in the Early 1960s
3. Brazil, Love it or Leave it — for the Stars: SF Film during the Era of the Military Hardliners (1969–1973)
4. Coming Up for Air: The Brazilian Ecodystopian Film
5. Proxy Futures and Other Simulacra: The Brazilian SF Comedy Endures, along with the Adventure Movie and the Musical
6. The Ghost in the Machine: Brazilian SF and the Revival of Spiritist Films
7. Southern Short Circuits: Contemporary Brazilian SF Film as Political Film
8. Find your Escape Pod: Afrofuturism, Amazofuturism, and Queer Sci-Fi
9. A Strange Object South of the Equator: Hypotheses and Investigations about Restraints against SF Literature and Films in Brazil
10. Do Brazilians Dream of Edenic (or Industrial) Futures?
Final Remarks, or, Hurry Up! We Are Dreaming!
Notes
References
Interviews
Index