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Luso-Brazilian Review 53:2

Rêgo, Cacilda and Marcus Brasileiro, eds. Migration in Lusophone Cinema.

New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. xi + 232 pp.

Given the major human displacements that have punctuated world history since
the birth of cinema in the 1890s, it is hardly surprising that migration figures
prominently on the silver screen. If the rise of the novel as the most widely read
literary genre coincided with the formation of nation states and, therefore, pro-
vided the new nations with foundational narratives, the emergence of cinema as
a cultural phenomenon accompanied the increasing globalization of the econ-
omy, as well as of political, social and artistic movements. Cinema came of age
at a time of mass population flows that left indelible marks on the development
of the seventh art. It suffices to recall the impact of European émigrés linked to
movie production in Hollywood during and immediately after World War II to
gauge the significance of migration for the film industry. Cinema is nowadays
a transnational art form, with the cast and crew of any movie typically hailing
from different parts of the world. Similarly, the market for cinema is increasingly
global, not only for the more widely distributed Anglo-­American productions
but also for movies made in smaller nations, which are able to reach a larger
audience through film festivals and online circulation.
Beyond the production and market features of the film industry, cinema has
more recently become a platform to reflect upon the experience of migration,
including postcolonial relations between former colonizers and colonized, exile,
diaspora, hybridity, and so on. The essays gathered in Migration in Lusophone
Cinema focus on these latter aspects of film. Eschewing the narrow confines of
“migrant” and “diasporic” movies, which are usually made by filmmakers of for-
eign origins, the editors opted for a broader understanding of migrant cinema
as that depicting various forms of human displacement, independent from the
directors’ background. Despite the more encompassing title, however, the book
concentrates primarily on Portuguese and Brazilian movies, overlooking the vi-
brant, albeit more recent, film production of the Portuguese-­speaking African
countries. Still, the volume is a welcome contribution to the field of Portuguese
and Brazilian film scholarship, which had hitherto neglected to dedicate a book-
length study to this central issue in Lusophone cinematic culture.
The first chapter in the collection, “Imagining Migration: A Panoramic View
of Lusophone Films and Tabu (2012) as a Case Study” by Carolin Overhoff Fer-
reira offers a comprehensive survey of the topic of migration in Lusophone cul-
ture and cinema, briefly mentioning not only Brazilian and Portuguese films but
also African ones. The following three chapters zoom in on specific Portuguese
filmmakers and films that address the theme of displacement: the work of Pedro
Costa and the movies Outros bairros (Other Neighborhoods, Kiluanje Liberdade,
Vasco Pimentel and Inês Gonçalves, 1999), Cinco dias, Cinco noites (Five Days,
Five Nights, José Fonseca e Costa, 1996) and Duplo exílio (Double Exile, Artur Ri-
beiro, 2001). Immigration from the former African colonies and the subsequent
process of integration of the new immigrants, together with its challenges and
Books Reviewed e63

failures, is a salient issue in recent Portuguese filmography, aptly discussed both

in the chapter on Costa and in that on Outros Bairros.
The essay “Performing Criminality: Immigration and Integration in Foreign
Land and Fado Blues” by Frans Weiser analyzes two Portuguese-­Brazilian co-­
productions that portray Brazilian immigration to Portugal, highlighting the
problematic notion of a Luso-­Brazilian identity based upon a shared language
and historical ties binding the two countries. The essay functions as a transitional
text that links the first half of the volume, dedicated to Portuguese film, to the
second part, devoted exclusively to the topic of migration in Brazilian cinema.
The chapters that comprise the second section of the book concentrate pri-
marily on movies about immigration to Brazil, acculturation to the host coun-
try and, sometimes, the desire of second- or third-­generation immigrants to go
back to their origins. The documentary Um passaporte húngaro (A Hungarian
Passport, Sandra Kogut, 2001), about the director’s efforts to get a passport from
the country of her grandparents, is discussed in two chapters, and there are also
analyses of Rapsódia arménia (Armenian Rhapsody, Gary Garanian, Cesar Ga-
ranian and Cassiana Der Haroutiounian, 2012), a documentary depicting the
return of Brazilians to their forbearers’ homeland, and of Gaijin. Caminhos da
liberdade (Gaijin. A Brazilian Odyssey, Tizuka Yamasaki, 1980) and the sequel
Gaijin. Ama-me como sou (Gaijin. Love Me as I Am, Tizuka Yamasaki, 2005),
about several generations of Japanese-­Brazilians and the phenomenon of reverse
immigration back to Japan.
Two chapters address the issue of politically motivated immigration to Bra-
zil by examining the movies Olga (Jayme Monjardim, 2004), about the German
communist leader Olga Benário, married to Brazilian communist Luiz Prestes
and deported to Germany in 1936, where she died in a concentration camp; Cin-
ema, aspirinas e urubus (Cinema, Aspirins, and Vultures, Marcelo Gomes, 2005)
that depicts a German national who came to Brazil to escape Nazism; and Tempos
de paz (Peacetime, Daniel Filho, 2009), about the arrival of a Polish immigrant
to Brazil and his confrontation with an immigration officer in the final months
of Getúlio Vargas’s New State regime. The last chapter in the volume analyzes
Helena Solberg’s 1995 documentary Carmen Miranda: Bananas is my Business,
paying particular attention to the singer’s emigration to the U.S. in 1939, where
she worked first on Broadway and then in Hollywood, becoming instrumental in
Franklin Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor Policy vis-à-vis Latin America.
Many Portuguese movies on migration showcase the cracks in the notion
of Lusophonia, Portugal’s conception of a fraternal bond forged among all
Portuguese-­speaking nations by virtue of sharing a common language. Their
Brazilian counterparts, in turn, reveal the underside of the country’s melting pot
ideology. As the authors of the different chapters emphasize, many of the films
about immigration to Brazil foreground the anti-­Semitism and racism that mi-
grants had to face, thus debunking the myth of the country as constituting a
racial democracy, where no one faces discrimination because of race or ethnic-
ity. One of the strengths of the volume is to highlight the gap between official
e64 Luso-Brazilian Review 53:2

discourses on migration and the reality faced by migrants, a disjunction depicted

in a large number of films on this topic, both from Portugal and from Brazil.
While the essays in this book offer well-­argued discussions on cinema de-
picting migration, the articulation between the first and second sections, on Por-
tuguese and Brazilian cinemas respectively, remains feeble, as the editors fail to
present a cogent justification as to why themes of migration in cinema from the
two nations should be analyzed together. What are the cinematic ties between
the two countries? In which ways are their approaches to the topic of migration
in film similar or different? Is the long history of Portuguese migration to Brazil
depicted in the movies and how does that depiction, or lack thereof, compare to
the portrayal of the more recent Brazilian migration to Portugal? It would have
been fruitful, for instance, to include some chapters comparing Portuguese and
Brazilian films on the theme of migration. In addition, the subject of cinematic
cooperation between the two nations could have been developed beyond the
passing mention of co-­productions, foregrounding the use of film crew members
and, especially, actors from one country in films produced in the other, taking
advantage of linguistic commonalities, as well as of differences in accent, often
for comic effects. The matter of film audience would also have warranted some
analysis in the context of a discussion on migration. Is there a transnational au-
dience for Portuguese and Brazilian cinema? Is cinema functioning as a means
to create imagined diasporic communities, of African or Brazilian immigrants in
Portugal or of Jewish-­Brazilians or Japanese-­Brazilians, for example? Migration
in Lusophone Cinema bypasses all such questions but paves the way for future
research that might address some of these crucial issues.
Patrícia Vieira
Georgetown University