The Brazilian Road Movie

The innovative collection of essays by a distinguished group of scholars brought together in The Brazilian Road Movie: Journeys of (Self)Discovery represents the first book-length publication on Brazil's encounters with and reworkings of one of cinema's most enduringly popular genres.

The Brazilian Road Movie: Journeys of (Self)Discovery explores some of the key trends and films in the development of the road movie in Brazil. Through a collection of essays by distinguished scholars, and covering a broad range of case studies, this text spans Brazilian film production from the silent era to the present day. This text examines issues such as the reworking of the genre in a Brazilian context, the relationship between documentary and fiction, between history, politics and cinema, gender and race, the wilderness and the urban space, the national and the transnational. The essays consider among other things how the experience of the journey helped develop and was instrumental in defining identities on screen. Adopting a variety of approaches, the volume considers the significance of the iconography of the road, the experience of movement and of life on the move for the representation of Brazil on screen.