The unknown Modernism

Abstract

There has been a recurrent commomplace in presenting a supposed intellectual isolation of Mário Peixoto and Limite (1931) at the history of cinema, even at Brazilian cultural history. I would like to challenge these two statements and argue in favor of an approach that considers Limite differently from an experimental tradition as well as a cartography of an intellectual and affective net to which Mário Peixoto has belonged considering a reading of Mário Peixoto’s journals and seventy testimonies of his relatives, friends and contemporaries that can be found at Mário Peixoto Archive in Rio de Janeiro. The testimonies have around one thousand and five hundred pages. I believe that this unpublished material can expand the knowledge not only of Mário Peixoto and his oeuvre but of the cultural history and the intellectual scene of Rio de Janeiro especially by 1930s. Still I want to propose another Modernism in which extractivism, especially closer to the “long decadence” of gold in Minas Gerais, and mainly to the decline of coffee plantations of Paraiba Valley is central to create a historical, aristocratic and critical sensibility.