Intermedial Territories: Maps and the Amazonian Moving Image

Although Bye bye Brasil (Carlos Diegues, 1980) is a well-funded Embrafilme production and a classic of national cinema and Os Arara (Andrea Tonacci, 1980-2) is an unfinished television series made for the Bandeirantes Network (only two out of the three intended episodes were completed and aired), these contemporaneous films travel the same territory along the Transamazon Highway in order to reflect critically on the issue of national integration and its consequences. They are also works that consciously navigate historic changes in audiovisual media—exploring the relationships between cinema, television and (in the case of Os Arara) video. Their differences are mutually illuminating because they highlight the range of filmic possibilities vis-à-vis the ideal of territorial integration manifested, in both cases, by the incorporation of maps in the mise-en-scène. This chapter argues that, while Bye bye Brazil’ s spatial critique is accompanied by a cinematic version of cartographic integration, Os Arara enacts a refusal of totality by dwelling in the border territories between film, television and video, and also by remaining suspended in a perennial state of incompleteness.