Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media. Issue 19: Performing the Intermedial across Brazilian Cinema

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    Alphaville Journal of Film and Screen Media Podcast. Episode 04, Issue 19, 'Performing the Intermedial across Brazilian Cinema'
    (Film and Screen Media, University College Cork, 2020) Courage, Tamara; Holly, Michael
    This roundtable discussion with Flávia Cesarino Costa, Marcela Amaral, Matheus Siqueira and Albert Elduque is moderated and introduced by the co-editor of this issue, Tamara Courage. This recording took place through an international Zoom roundtable discussion that brought together researchers in Brazil, Canada and Spain on 5 July 2020.
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    General editor's note
    (Film and Screen Media, University College Cork, 2020) Rascaroli, Laura; Rascaroli, Laura
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    Chanchadas and intermediality: On the musical numbers of Aviso aos navegantes (Watson Macedo, 1950)
    (Film and Screen Media, University College Cork, 2020) Cesarino Costa, Flávia; Gibbs, John; Courage, Tamara; Elduque, Albert
    This audiovisual essay investigates the intermedial nature of Brazilian film comedies produced during the 1940s and 50s by exploring the musical numbers of Aviso aos navegantes (Calling All Sailors, Watson Macedo, 1950). Brazilian cinema of this period is a privileged arena of different media strategies. Its “mixed” style is informed by Hollywood cinema but also by the domestic influence of radio, Carnival, and by the local forms of comic staging of the teatro de revista (the Brazilian equivalent of music hall or vaudeville). Of particular interest in this regard are the chanchadas, a body of films made between the mid-1930s and the early 1960s, that presented musical performances intertwined with comic situations, slender narrative lines and strong connections with the world of Carnival. Our aim is to show how the relationships between the different forms of cultural production in 1950s Brazil can be identified in a specific chanchada, opening a dialogue between musical performances on stage, over the radio, at Carnival and on screen. The essay also examines similarities and differences between chanchadas and the Hollywood musical comedy tradition. One area explored is integration, both in the sense in which it is often used in film studies, to discuss the relationship between the numbers and the narrative, and in reflecting on whether the different elements which feed into the numbers of Aviso aos navegantes are seamlessly combined in the film. Despite the huge popular success of his films, Watson Macedo was considered by many as the most “Americanised” of the directors of that period, adhering less to the critical mechanisms of parody than was the case with his contemporaries. However, if we pay attention to Macedo’s musical numbers, it is evident that these performances are not imperfect copies of Hollywood originals, but have a logic of their own. This audiovisual essay complements Flávia Cesarino Costa’s other contribution to this issue of Alphaville, the article “Building an Integrated History of Musical Numbers in Brazilian Chanchadas”, by exploring related ideas in the context of a single film. As well as the interest of the video essay’s own exploration and argument, the pairing of essays—traditional and videographic—enables readers of this issue to pursue their thinking about chanchadas and intermediality with specific audiovisual material in front of them.
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    Building an integrated history of musical numbers in Brazilian chanchadas
    (Film and Screen Media, University College Cork, 2020) Cesarino Costa, Flávia; Courage, Tamara; Elduque, Albert
    This article discusses industrial and aesthetical aspects of the musical numbers in 1950s Brazilian chanchadas. The chanchadas were a body of films made between the 1930s and 60s, that combined a mixed style derived from domestic influences of radio and popular music routines and from local forms of comic theatrical revues. I propose an examination of the entertainment industry’s influence on the musical numbers chosen for these 1950s chanchadas. This intermedial approach is based on the strong links between cinema and other cultural practices. I will argue the need to take into account not only theatrical practices, but also the routines of carnival culture, as well as the music industry and radio performances, in order to reconsider longstanding historical accounts based on the specificity of film media.
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    Performing the intermedial across Brazilian cinema
    (Film and Screen Media, University College Cork, 2020) Courage, Tamara; Elduque, Albert; Courage, Tamara; Elduque, Albert
    Intermediality as a theoretical and methodological perspective champions impurity. Overall, it is concerned with the interaction, contamination, and mixture between different media, breaking down existing barriers that currently exclude hybrid forms of artistic expression, which also inevitably exposes the limits of media specificity. Musical performance constitutes a privileged space to reflect on intermediality. It brings in not only music, but a mixture which includes literature, theatre, dancing and even painting and architecture. Music performance calls for all these artistic practices and articulates them through the song. Then, when it is filmed by a camera and recorded with microphones to be exhibited on a screen, new layers of meaning are added. This Alphaville issue is concerned with the performance of the intermedial in Brazilian cinema through music performance. It is an output of the project “Towards an Intermedial History of Brazilian Cinema: Exploring Intermediality as a Historiographic Method”, a shared endeavour by the University of Reading and the Federal University of São Carlos which was developed between 2015 and 2019, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) in the UK and the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) in Brazil.