Is blackness everywhere?
In the last ten years, the discussions about representation and representativity have increased remarkably in Brazil. The effort to establish a historical, aesthetic, and political framework for the development of the conceptual and practical field of black Brazilian cinema is motivated by several reasons, crossing socio-historical, racial, gender and class issues. The main defining characteristic of a concept of black Brazilian cinema, so far, is the affirmation that black films are those made by black directors. Nevertheless, how could the displacement of the conventional idea of authorship broaden the historical-conceptual repertoire of black cinema in Brazil?
At the 73rd Berlinale, there are some films directed by white Brazilian people that are artistically crafted around black Brazilian experience, culture or corporeity, such as The Devil Queen (1973, Antônio Carlos da Fontoura) and Infantry (2022, Laís Santos Araújo). Could those movies directed by white people be considered black cinema? Which boundaries and complexities surround this kind of statement?
Historical background of Brazilian cinema
Although black people and their cultural practices have been filmed and represented since the origins of Brazilian cinema, few films, at least during the 20th century, were directed by black filmmakers. Historically, a substantial portion of black characters was built around racial stereotypes and caricatures (blackness was associated with characteristics such as ‘ugly’, ‘dirty’, ‘subaltern’, ‘dangerous’, and ‘pernicious’) that deprecated black physical attributes, as well as their cultural expression, overvaluing the white-European ideal of culture and beauty.
The understanding that Brazilian cinema has mainly been produced by white men and people from the most privileged social classes, is a significant reason for the affirmation that black Brazilian cinema is the cinema created by black directors and no more by the ‘white gaze’. The demand for black representations that highlight the black cultural and symbolic heritage stimulates the development of the concept of Brazilian black cinema, especially films that emphasise affirmative gestures of blackness or black identities.
That is, the idea of black Brazilian cinema is associated with films that highlight the difference and diversity of black identities, recognising the value of Afro-Brazilian, African, and Afro-Diaspora cultures, especially those in which black people can talk about themselves through their own perspectives. In this context, the increase of black Brazilian filmmakers plays a significant role in rethinking the aesthetic and narrative standards surrounding black cultures and bodies historically associated with ‘negative representation’.
The key figure in the formulation of what we have contemporarily understood as black Brazilian cinema is Zózimo Bulbul. Based on the argument of exceptionality, the Soul In The Eye (1973, Zózimo Bulbul) can be considered the inaugural gesture of Brazilian black cinema. Far from being the first black filmmaker in Brazil (people such as Cajado Filho and Haroldo Costa preceded him), Bulbul's is considered the pioneer of black Brazilian cinema for depicting the psychological and cultural effects of the Brazilian slavery and black diaspora in an ‘evidently anti-racist perspective’ supposedly not previously found in the history of Brazilian cinema.
Nevertheless, this inaugural gesture emphasises the authorship of film directors. It establishes a starting point in the history of black Brazilian cinema that ignores the presence of other black professionals (such as actors, screenwriters, and editors, among others), who according to film critic Juliano Gomes (2021), "left such a mark on the films they were in that we can easily think of their contribution as a special kind of 'authors,' as creative vectors for the outcome of their films, and of Brazilian cinema as a whole”.
How can we ignore the shining Grande Otelo's interpretation in Rio, Zona Norte (1957, Nelson Pereira dos Santos)? The racial and social conflict between the characters interpreted by Aguinaldo Camargo and Grande Otelo in Também somos irmãos (1949, José Carlos Burle)? Cristina Amaral's montage work in Ôrí (1989, Raquel Gerber) or Dry Ground Burning (2022, Adirley Queiroz and Joana Pimenta)? The expressivity of the eyes by the black girls who are starring in Infantry (2022)?
On the one hand, delimiting the idea of Black Brazilian cinema through the authorship of the film director is a political strategy, a movement of self-affirmation, as well as an economic and historical repositioning in counterpoint to a cinema that was dominated by white men and people of higher social classes. On the other hand, this strategy ends up (re)producing historical obliterations concerning the black presence in Brazilian cinema and excludes contemporary films that feature not only black bodies on the screens, but also elaborate performative, aesthetic, and conceptual movements that interact with black Brazilian cinema today.
Is blackness everywhere?
The explosive performance of Milton Gonçalves (Diaba) in The Devil Queen guides Antonio Carlos da Fontoura's camera to follow the actor's movement. Dynamic and powerful, Rainha uses extreme violence to liberate the black body from the conventional position of marginality. The vitality of her black and dissident body, however, is not built by herself alone but also through the interaction of her female and non-binary followers and the thugs who monitor the marijuana trafficking. This is how she expands her body and spreads it everywhere.
Collectivity and double-meaning are characteristics of black, African, and Afro-diasporic cultures around the world: whether in the process of escaping from the slavery system, to create independent organisations such as the Quilombos, in religious practices such as Candomblé, or artistic practices such as Capoeira. In addition to the black bodies in front of the camera and the collective nature of its narrative, The Devil Queen draws attention to its optical tricks and double meaning. Words, looks, sequences of images, and objects take on ambivalent meanings and simultaneously communicate feelings that can contradict each other. How can so much "brightness and lightness", as film critic Gabriel Araújo (2022) puts it, turn so quickly into "shadow and mockery"?
Diaba, while being profoundly violent, also seems fragile and gently involved with Robertinho (Edgar Rugel Aranha). Isa (Odete Lara) is introduced to us as a woman living in an abusive relationship with Bereco (Stephan Necessian), and then later appears in a stunning musical performance, self-aware and with a power that previously seemed absent. The 'Diaba's disciples', that are exuberant in their femininity, reveal the violence and the anger necessary to satisfy the commands of their Queen. It is within this ambivalent role that The Devil Queen operates blackness.
Besides, the extensive use of slang, which creates a certain difficulty in understanding the dialogues between the characters, the ironic sarcasm that surrounds the scenes of violence going from verisimilitude to the completely unreal through excessive tricks and the performativity of the bodies, the plot development through misunderstandings and betrayals that block easy and quick formulations regarding the movie’s characters, are some more examples of formal procedures that exist through the exercise of dual communication and ambivalence, or in other words through the blackness.
In Infantry (2022, Laís Araújo Santos), silence and mystery are used as filmic techniques to interpret black bodies on screen. A multitasking mother, a careless father, a little girl who wants to become a ‘young lady’, a brother who doesn't understand the women around him, and a friend who has to have an abortion: the plot of the film unfolds in blurred lines, through whispers and exchanged glances. If, on the one hand, the silence and non-verbal communication are symptoms of the tabu around topics such as menstruation and abortion, on the other hand, it preserves a mystery that protects the stories and pains of each one of the characters.
In A Coragem do Segredo, the performer Jota Mombaça explores the politics of contemporary visibility and argues against the notion of silence as synonymous with the historical silencing of black and dissident bodies. She affirms that "keeping a secret, in this sense, is not about possessing a knowledge that cannot be transmitted (...); actually, keeping a secret has to do with articulating, nurturing, and preserving that sensibility that crosses the individual and his language by extrapolation”. In this sense, the exchange of glances between mother, daughter, son and friend is not just a refusal to communicate something, but a transmission of knowledge (also ancestral, since abortion was a practice between enslaved black women to save their babies from the slavery system) and a way of expanding the sensitivity, by being aware of the other's whispers. Talking in silence is a black practice (of resistance), that is, an operation of blackness.
I would like to repeat the question that I asked at the start of the text: Could those movies directed by white people be considered black cinema? The relationship between black bodies and their practices emerges as a vestige to amplify our understanding of what black Brazilian cinema is (or is not). Our purpose is to reposition the way of writing cinematic narratives, refusing the central idea of the director’s authorship (that is too white!). We must find ways to recognise and discuss the black operations and black presence of the past, present, and future in (black) Brazilian cinema. We are not seeking to legitimise white directors within what is understood as black Brazilian cinema. Although, we wish to expand the references and repertoires of what could be this cinema, with black cultures, black bodies' performativities, and more.
Blackness is everywhere.