When New Waves Crash: The Friction of Transnational Film Distribution in Brazil, 1931–1959

Abstract

ABSTRACT:This article examines the ebbs and flows of German, Italian, French, and Japanese cinemas in Brazil in order to shift attention away from European producers and toward the local distribution gatekeepers who shaped the itineraries of these cinemas and to demonstrate how trade and monetary policy, changing film distribution practices, and regional exhibition monopolies shaped the historical trajectories of cinema. By reconstructing the pre- and postwar circulation of European and Japanese cinemas in Brazil, this essay proposes an odographic approach to film history. Expanding on the transnational turn in film and media studies, this is a film history attuned to the flows and friction of commodity circulation, industrial exchange, and infrastructures of film and media circulation.