CINUSP Paulo Emílio is the movie theater at USP´s campus of São Paulo. Admission is free and open to the general public. We provide diverse film programming through special and thematic showcases produced by university´s students and faculty, alongside seminars, conferences, workshops, premiere screenings and partnerships with the most prominent film festivals.

CINUSP aims to spread cinematic culture, to stimulate research and develop knowledge, thus contributing to permanent deepening of the university´s environment.

Sessions are Monday to Friday at 16:00 and 19:00. Programming varies throughout the year, and in addition to films, workshops and debates, CINUSP produces different publications that feature the research and discussion related to its activities with both original and standard reference texts.

History

Created in October of 1993 by the Dean´s Office on Cultural and Extramural Activities, then under prof. João Alexandre Barbosa´s direction, CINUSP was designed to educate an academic audience, unique in its knowledge of diverse cinematographic production methods. The idea was to show University´s own production, to house film clubs and also screen some films from São Paulo´s commercial circuit. In the beginning programming was made by prof. Maria Dora Mourão, then head of the Film Department at ECA-USP, and there was only one session, Monday to Friday, at 18:30. Always a short film was shown, followed by a feature.

At first CINUSP would eventually start charging for tickets, at half the usual price of cinemas, but as further incentive towards culture, that never happened.

As years went by, sessions changed until they became the special and thematic showcases, workshops and conferences we host nowadays, produced by a team of faculty and students.

Paulo Emílio

CINUSP´s name honors Paulo Emilio Salles Gomes (1916-1977), professor, film critic and historian, largely responsible for opening new prospects for the Brazilian film criticism.

Being ever politically and culturally engaged, he was arrested in 1935 after the Communist Uprising, but was able to escape. After staying in France, he was later admitted at the Philosophy program at the old FFCL-USP. At that time he created the University´s first film society. People gathered and rented films, sharing the expenses among themselves. The film club was outlawed by the New Estate´s Press and Propaganda Department (DIP). In 1946 the second São Paulo Film Club is created, whose collection would later set up the Museum of Modern Art´s film library, also directed by Salles Gomes. The same collection later spawned the Brazilian Film Archive, which had the critic as their first Head-Preserver.

In 1965 Paulo Emílio helped establish one of the first cinema studies programs in Brazil at the University of Brasilia, while also organizing film festivals. In 1968 he started lecturing Film History and Brazilian Cinema at the School of Communications and Arts (ECA) at USP. Those classes were open to anyone interested in cinema, especially Brazilian.

Among his most important written work are “70 years of Brazilian Cinema” (1966, with Ademar Gonzaga), “Jean Vigo” (1968), “Humberto Mauro, Cataguases, Cinearte” (1974) and “Paulo Emilio: Film Criticism in the Literary Supplement (1982, posthumously published).