Jorge Bodanzky's Celluloid Jungle

Brazilian filmmaker Jorge Bodanzky directed and co-directed a number of feature films and documentaries on the Amazon in the 1970s and early 1980s.  Iracema – uma transa amazônica (1974) embodied the politics of the dictatorship and environmental destruction of the Amazon.  While Bodanzky and Orlando Senna originally received funding for the film from EMBRAFILME, it was edited and released in Germany (Wolf Gauer, Stopfilms), and prohibited in Brazil for five years.   This paper examines the ways in which Bodanzky and Orlando Senna constructed the Amazon in their protest films, placing these representations into a transnational political context.  Drawing from a long history of visual representations of the Amazon, Iracema and the other film both drew from and rejected exotic imagery.  Through film reviews and debates about the film within Brazil and outside of Brazil, I show how the film’s political relevance as a protest film was accentuated because of the political messages about environmental destruction and the representations of gender and race.