Reassessing the First Brazilian Women Filmmakers: Approaches to Historical Research and Analytical Methods (1930-1951)

Abstract

Between the 1930s and 1940s, women in Brazil began to make films, confronting significant prejudice and material constraints in production. Cléo de Verberena, Gilda de Abreu, and Carmen Santos not only directed but also worked as actresses and producers, thereby engaging in various artistic capacities throughout their careers. While traditional narratives of Brazilian cinema have often neglected the contributions of these pioneering female filmmakers, interest in their achievements surged from the 1990s onward, resulting in numerous academic investigations within the fields of communication and history. This paper aims to reconstruct over three decades of scholarship concerning the first women filmmakers, situating the ongoing struggles among various social agents over the recognition of these women’s contributions while critically evaluating the predominant analytical frameworks employed. The cross-cutting approaches to gender issues, as well as the selection of feminist, historiographical, or stylistic perspectives, alongside a critical examination of primary source usage in interviews, illuminate a protracted evolution in the partial re-examination of Brazilian cinema’s historical narrative.