When Violence Appeals: The Circulation and Reception of Brazilian Cinema Nôvo in Italy (1960–1968)

Cinema Nôvo is generally regarded as the first and most aesthetically accomplished cinematic wave in Brazilian film history, maintaining a solid canonical status in international film historiographies to date. This essay historicizes the early reception and circulation of Cinema Nôvo and focuses on the sites whereby these processes crucially occurred: the politicized contexts of Italian film festivals in the 1960s and critical writing in left-wing journals and magazines at a time when third-worldist theories started circulating in Italy. Identifying and examining the forms of critical intervention and gestures of political solidarity these festivals extended toward the cinemanovisti, this article sheds light on the uneven power relations at play in these encounters and their impact on canon formation processes.