A Brazilian Ed Wood? Rafaelle Rossi, Boca do Lixo and the Idea of Bad Movies in Brazil

Abstract

In this paper, we discuss the rediscovery of the Italian-Brazilian sexploitation filmmaker Raffaele Rossi (1938-2007) by Brazilian critics and researchers in the 2000s. We will observe how these researchers and critics, guided both by the bad reputation of the São Paulo cinema of “Boca do Lixo” [Mouth of Garbage] of the 1970s, and by the contemporary cult to the so-called paracinema (SCONCE, 1995), also inherited a tradition of decades of studies of the Brazilian cinema that consider precariousness as a power that reveals the uniqueness of Brazilian cinema (SALLES GOMES, 1973; FERREIRA, 1986).

Keywords Brazilian cinema; Raffaele Rossi; paracinema; erotic movies; precariousness