ABSTRACT
Film tourism has become a prominent tourism niche worldwide, believed to bring important economic contributions to locations. However, research has shown that this phenomenon might also have detrimental effects on places and communities, such as overcrowding and cultural commodification. This chapter addresses these issues by focusing on the case of Brazil, where film tourism occurs in a spontaneous and unplanned manner, and often in locations that experience different political, economic, social and environmental vulnerabilities. Presenting the main findings of a five-year-long research project, this chapter provides answers as to how film tourism initiatives develop over time in vulnerable locations in Brazil, and how members of the involved communities perceive, experience and evaluate these initiatives. Based on participant observation and interviews with local stakeholders involved in three film tourism ecologies in the country, this study demonstrates how film tourism benefits are often only temporary – a phenomenon summarized in the original notion of the telenovela effect – and how the success and sustainability of film tourism projects depend on a series of contextual circumstances of places and power dynamics between people.
