In this paper we consider the contemporary status of the Brazilian movie focusing on the contributions of the last decade, in particular, the 2005 film Cinema Aspirinas e Urubus, (Cinema, Aspirins and Vultures) selected in Cannes, and other 60 festivals, directed by Marcelo Gomes. It is a road movie about two men traveling the dusty byways of Brazil's desert-like Sertão in 1942. It portrays the casual meeting between a German (played by the German actor Peter Ketnath) who fled his country to avoid World War II, surviving on the sales of a new miraculous drug, Aspirin, to the Brazilian back country, and a Brazilian (the Brazilian actor João Miguel), who hitched a ride away from the drought and suffering of his region in search of a better life. Our intention is to bring back space and time on the agenda of cultural theory in general and a Cultural Studies approach to road movies in particular. The road, as a metaphor for life itself, is represented in the film, not so much as a romanticized existential personal experience, but rather as an ambivalent site of personal discovery - while Johann's journey is inward, leading far from his German roots, Ranulpho´s escape is outward, a refugee from Brazil's drought-plagued north. Each everyday moment captured from the two men´s eyes in the cab of a Bayer Aspirin truck whose driver take a portable movie projector and screen privilege space-time-relations in terms of the Cultural Geography agenda – space is understood as social; time as historical; and place as the socially and culturally marked intersection of space and time.
Palavras-chaves: Brazilian cinema; Cultural Studies; space and time; road movies
Autores: Hanna, Vera (Universidade Presbiteriana Mackenzie, Brazil / Brasilien)