“Cinema Brasileiro e Realidade Social”, de Paulo Emílio Salles Gomes

ABSTRACT The aim of this article is to comment on the conference “Brazilian Cinema and Social Reality,” written in the early 1960s by Paulo Emílio Salles Gomes. More specifically, it seeks to identify the tensions that pervade the work of the film critic from São Paulo in a period marked by the emergence of a new type of cinema production and by discussions on the country’s economic development. Significantly, the conference borrows from Formação da literatura brasileira, by Antonio Candido de Mello e Souza, presenting a particular kind of “new awareness” about Brazilian cinema, its situation and possibilities.