Saudade in Brazilian Cinema ─ The History of an Emotion on Film

The Brazilian Portuguese idea of saudade is often translated as a powerful relative of nostalgia, which brings together love and grief, a melancholia and a longing focused on a memory, an absence. Saudade in Brazilian Cinema looks specifically at how this emotion is imagined on the screen. Analyzing over sixty years of Brazilian cinema, Jack A. Draper III uses the idea of saudade to create an analytical framework within the field of emotion studies. Draper places insights on saudade on screen in dialogue with theoretical studies of emotion and affect as well as film theory. The result is a new way of understanding saudade and the representation of emotion in twentieth and twenty-first century Brazilian cinema.

Jack A. Draper III is the author of Forró and Redemptive Regionalism from the Brazilian Northeast: Popular Music in a Culture of Migration, as well as a variety of publications focusing on emotion, gender, and social class in Brazilian cinema.