Reimagining Brazilian Television

Luiz Fernando Carvalho's Contemporary Vision

Eli Carter brings the unique, colorful, and imaginative work of Luiz Fernando Carvalho to international attention. This Brazilian film and television director deserves to be known and seen outside of Brazil for his brilliantly baroque and antirealist theatrical style. Carvalhos's TV series draw on elements from other arts such as theater, literature, and painting, ultimately creating a special sense of space and time. The book results from carefully conducted research on the visual qualities of the work, but it also approaches the key processes of preparation for shooting.
Esther Hamburger, University of São Paulo, Brazil

The Brazilian television industry is one of the most productive and commercially successful in the world. At the forefront of this industry is TV Globo and its production of standardized telenovelas, which millions of Brazilians and viewers from over 130 countries watch nightly. Eli Lee Carter examines the field of television production by focusing on the work of one of Brazil’s greatest living directors, Luiz Fernando Carvalho. Through an emphasis on Carvalho’s thirty-plus year career working for TV Globo, his unique mode of production, and his development of a singular aesthetic as a reaction to the dominant telenovela genre, Carter sheds new light on Brazilian television’s history, its current state, and where it is going—as new legislation and technology push it increasingly toward a post-network era.

about the author

Eli Carter

Eli Lee Carter is assistant professor of Portugese at the University of Virginia.

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Eli Carter