Professor Stephanie Dennison Inaugural Lecture

Women and Film Culture in contemporary Brazil My talk will take as its focus the shifting modes of women's filmmaking and film production in Brazil in the 21st century. I will trace these shifts against the backdrop of first of all the Workers Party-related agenda of greater engagement with so-called women's issues, and the kind of narratives that what I term the "Workers Party Project" has produced. I then consider the recent (post 2016) filmmaking scene. As Eliane Brum has argued, the impeachment of Brazil's first female president Dilma Rousseff demonstrated that Brazil is undergoing a major crisis of identity. So to what extent is this crisis played out in recent films by or dealing primarily with women? I will discuss the work of a number of filmmakers in my talk, including Maria Augusta Ramos, Anna Muylaert and Kleber Mendonça Filho.