The Brazilian cinematograph in Dresden

Abstract

Organized by the German pharmacist and businessman Karl August Lingner, the International Hygiene Exhibition in Dresden took place between May and October 1911. The Exhibition included 13 scientific pavilions built by different countries. The Brazilian pavilion, the sole representative of the Americas, was reportedly quite successful. It introduced European audiences to achievements in unprecedented campaigns to combat yellow fever and Chagas disease. Likewise, the Brazilian pavilion displayed the work of research institutions created between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that gradually reduced the human and social underdevelopment inherited from a colonial past. Each day in the Brazilian pavilion, four scientific films were screened in a packed theater. Yellow Fever (1911), Chagas in Lassance (1909–10), Vacinogenic Institute of São Paulo (1910), and Butantan Institute (1910) synthesized the complexity of a country as large as a continent, a country with enough social inequality to cause perplexity. However, the films screened in the Brazilian pavilion evoked the promise of science overcoming misery. This article aims to explore the boundaries between scientific cinema and popular science, documentary, and sf in two of the Brazilian films screened at the Exhibition in Dresden.