Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>The introduction outlines how The Oxford Handbook of Brazilian Cinema offers not a general overview of Brazil’s film history but rather the latest and most innovative scholarship dealing with the country’s filmic practices that sets out to rethink and redraw the parameters of Brazilian cinema beyond its conventional delineations. Several factors about cinema in Brazil require an approach that critically reconsiders established categories of analysis of national cinemas, among them the transnational and multicultural nature of filmmaking in Brazil, from its origins to the present; the myriad forms of independent filmmaking and regional cycles that fall outside the mainstream networks of financing, production, and distribution; the vital work of marginalized groups, such as Black and Indigenous filmmakers who often work with limited distribution and in unconventional formats, such as short experimental and documentary films; and the wide-ranging history of transmedial practices in Brazilian cinema that has seen filmmakers engage with and incorporate non-cinematic forms such as literature, fine art, and music. To conceptualize this volume’s goals, the introduction proposes that the key question should not be “What is Brazilian cinema” but rather “What is cinema in Brazil”? In other words, how do we understand cinema as a technology, a medium, and a cultural formation in light of Brazil’s complex social, spatial, ethnic, and historical specificities? The introduction elaborates on this question and provides an overview of the handbook’s structure and chapters.</jats:p>