Stephanie Dennison
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Brazucas on screen
The Brazilian diaspora in London as depicted in Henrique Goldman’s Jean Charles
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Jean Charles (2009) is the work of London-based Brazilian director Henrique Goldman. It is a free adaptation of the story of Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian mistaken for a terror suspect and shot dead by British police in Stockwell tube station in 2005. As well as providing a context to the story of Jean Charles and the making of the film, this chapter focuses on the portrayal of London as a space of work and play for the sizeable Brazilian diaspora (between seventy and one hundred thousand Brazilians live in London), in what, at first, is a veritable celebration of Brazilian Portuguese. Brazilians are depicted as being left to their own devices until post-national forces denominated global terrorism spoil this slice of Brazilian life in London, and Jean Charles is shot dead. At this point the language focus notably shifts to English, and London is transformed. Without the safe haven of their language, the Brazilian characters are quite simply lost. Given the difficulties that Goldman experienced in getting this co-production made, this chapter argues Goldman’s film can be just as much read as an exposé of the trials of South American ‘transnational’ filmmakers working in the UK in general as it is a damning critique of the treatment of immigrants at the hands of the UK authorities.

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Global London on screen

Visitors, cosmopolitans and migratory cinematic visions of a superdiverse city

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