Jean-Claude Bernardet: a tribute

Abstract

The Editorial Board of MATRIZes appreciates when interviews submitted to the journal are conducted with pioneering researchers who have had a strong influence in their field of study, considering that the relatively broad format of this type of text can foster the recapitulation of significant aspects of their trajectories and self-reflective discussions. From this perspective, one name remembered was that of Jean-Claude Bernardet, an author whose contributions have been fundamental to Brazilian film studies. With a personality as multifaceted as that of his mentor, Paulo Emílio Sales Gomes, Bernardet passed away on July 12 of this year, leaving an important mark on national culture as a critic, actor, screenwriter, filmmaker, translator, writer, professor, and university researcher at the School of Communications and Arts of the University of São Paulo (USP). As a way of paying posthumous tribute to Bernardet, the journal reached out to people close to him to verify the existence of any unpublished interviews, and came across filmmaker Fábio Rogério, who kindly shared some materials that had not yet been released in print. Thus, an interview conducted on December 1, 2019, at the Fest Aruanda Hotel in João Pessoa, Paraíba, was selected and edited, in which Bernardet discusses aspects of his biography and his relationship with Brazilian cinema.