Conversation with Adilson Mendes

A great champion of Brazilian cinema, which he contributed to revealing, one of the country’s main intellectuals and the first historian to have worked on Jean Vigo’s oeuvre, Paulo Emilio Sales Gomes was a multi-faceted figure: screenwriter, writer, film critic, essayist, historian, founder of Brazil’s first film archive and preservationist. Born into a middle-class family, young Sales Gomes was first involved politically before becoming a film critic and historian in the 1940s. In 1956, he founded the Cinemateca Brasileira of São Paulo, which he ran until his death. After receiving his PhD, he began teaching film at the Universities of Brasília and São Paulo. Theory did not appeal to Sales Gomes, so he adopted a historic approach and used filmmakers’ archives and films as the basis of his thought. Like Henri Langlois in France, he strove for the preservation and dissemination of films within the Cinemateca Brasileira. His work as head of the Cinemateca and as a critic would leave a lasting mark on Brazil’s film scene. Sales Gomes made an important contribution to the creation of Cinema Novo as both a guru and active supporter of the new generation. Though his activity and influence on Brazilian cinema may be much vaster than his writings, his written work is nonetheless considerable.

Adilson Mendes