ABSTRACT
Brazil is the world’s fifth largest producer of waste. It produces over 80 million tonnes of rubbish per year and only 3% of it is recycled. Jardim Gramacho, the inspiration for the setting of the film Trash: a esperanca vem do lixo, was one of the world’s largest open-air rubbish dumps. The concept of lixo is one that has “contaminated” much Brazilian culture, serving both to negatively label some more popular cultural production, and at the same time heralding sites of intense creativity. Tropicalist filmmakers framed a resistant strategy premised on a low-cost “aesthetic of garbage”. Trash is a UK–Brazil co-production, shot almost entirely in Portuguese with a mostly Brazilian cast and crew and filmed on location in Rio de Janeiro. In terms of the generation of an appropriate paracinematic narrative pre-and post-film release in order to garner attention and boost sales, producers and director played their parts accordingly.
