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Migration in Lusophone Cinema by Cacilda Rêgo and Marcus Brasileiro

2017; Modern Humanities Research Association; Volume: 33; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/port.2017.0010

2222-4270

Paulo de Medeiros,

History, Culture, and Society

Portuguese Studies vol. 33 no. 1 (2017), 123–30© Modern Humanities Research Association 2017 Reviews Cacilda Rêgo and Marcus Brasileiro (editors), Migration in Lusophone Cinema (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). 232 pages. Print and e-book. Reviewed by Paulo de Medeiros (University of Warwick) Migration has been a constant of human history throughout the ages. In recent times it has continued to increase — the United Nations reports 244 million international migrants in 2015 — and now constitutes one of the more acute problems facing the world. In a sense, issues of migration have become a defining element of the way in which politics are conducted, as we witness a renewal of xenophobic and nationalistic rhetoric across the globe, and markedly so in Europe and the Americas. Film has become a privileged medium in which to debate the complex issues surrounding migration and the myriad ways in which it intersects with questions of identity and representation in its various meanings. None of this is new, of course: at least since the beginning of the 1980s there has been increased scholarship on migratory flows and in 2007, for instance, the European Film Academy devoted its conference to ‘Migration in Movies’. Yet, in spite of the continuous growth of such studies, the present volume can rightly be seen as pioneering and as a first attempt at collectively thinking through some of the most pressing questions of our time through the lens of the cinemas of a number of Portuguese-speaking countries, especially Brazil and Portugal. It is an important and timely contribution to film studies, to migration studies and, not least, to what, for lack of a better term, one still refers to as ‘Lusophone’ studies. The volume contains eleven individual chapters as well as an Introduction by the editors and a brief filmography. The Introduction is very clear and, even though it still reads a bit programmatically, it will be very useful for a large number of scholars in film studies who might lack a point of entry to the situation in Portugal and Brazil. The first chapter seems designed to carry this on and provide an even larger overview of the field, yet, as its title already shows, it is actually both a ‘Panoramic View of Lusophone Film’ and a specific case study of one individual film, Miguel Gomes’s recent and much acclaimed Tabu (2012). In a sense this introductory essay already signals a split in the book’s conception, a sort of constant slide between the need to provide a generalizing overview and the desire to focus on very concrete examples. In other words, one could say that the introductory essay, like the volume as a whole, does both too much and too little. Perhaps there is an inherent constraint on this project at this moment, as the authors certainly realize that their intended audience might well be ignorant of many specific aspects of the films they refer to. The Reviews 124 way that each individual chapter navigates this challenge naturally varies. For instance, the choice of Tabu as a case study with which to open the volume can be justified in many ways, taking into consideration the film’s widespread reception and the fact that to a great extent it attempts to problematize many of the questions that this volume addresses relating to Portugal’s imperial past and its semi-peripheral condition. However, the attention given to plot details can be seen as a sort of fascination that precludes a more detached critical stand. Conversely, the economy of the analysis proffered by Nadia Lie in ‘Reverse Migration in Brazilian Transnational Cinema: Um passaporte húngaro and Rapsódia Arménia’ goes a long way towards allowing for a solid anchoring of the two films discussed within debates into transnational and documentary film that transcend the specific case of Brazil. It might be tempting to see the volume as divided into two parts, one focusing on Portugal, the second, on Brazil; Africa, much less present, would then be seen still under the aegis of the focus on Portuguese film. Besides the introductory chapter which briefly references some African films, I have in mind especially the essays by Nuno Barradas...