Two Hungaries and Many Saudades: Transnational and Postnational Emotional Vectors in Contemporary Brazilian Cinema

Abstract

The emotion of saudade has a long and storied history of representations in Brazilian art. Often the emotion has been expressed in a context of diaspora or exile, as in Gon çalves Dias’s famous poem, Canção de Exílio. As in this poem, the emotion has typically been tied to nationalism in artistic representations, with the beloved object of saudade in large part represented as Brazil itself (whether it be the Brazilian people, climate, culture, or something else perceived as distant from the artist/subject of narration). In a postmodern era characterized by the globalization of national economies and communication systems, one can see signs in cinema of the formation of new identities that are transnational and at times postnational. In concert with the shifting identities of filmic subjects, one finds a shift in the objects toward which their emotions are directed, as well as in the intensity and malleability of those emotions.