... The spectacles of real-life crime that unfolded across illustrated journalism, popular theater, and early film in Brazil’s two fastest-growing cities at the turn of the twentieth century, framed real-life acts of violence as thrilling signs of local modernity. As elites sought to transform Rio...

... In Rio de Janeiro in the latter half of the 1910s, a craze for imported serial films fostered new practices of film consumption, novel conceptions of cinema’s defining characteristics, and fresh ambitions for local film production. The popularity of serial films and their tie-in novelizations...

... Chapter 5 examines the production of sensational melodramas outside Rio and São Paulo in the 1920s as the dynamics of the Brazilian economy fueled disparities between the urban Southeast and other regions. Film exhibition was also marked by geographic unevenness; serials and westerns were shown...