Livia Azevedo Lima

Affiliate Lecturer
Photo of Livia Azevedo Lima

About

Livia Azevedo Lima is a cross-disciplinary scholar, nonfiction editor, and film curator. Her research focuses on how aesthetic forms relate to social and political issues, particularly inequality. She studied Cinema Novo and Brazilian modern literature during her PhD in Cinema and Media Studies at the University of São Paulo, developing the concept of the filmmaker as a reader and employing genetic criticism to analyze unfinished works, novels, scripts, and films by the leftist filmmaker Paulo César Saraceni and the queer author Lúcio Cardoso, well-known for his novel Chronicle of the Murdered House (1959). Through a decolonial feminist perspective, Lima explored how these authors conceived female characters in various patriarchal contexts in Brazil, ranging from the authoritarianism of Estado Novo (1937-1945) and the civil-military dictatorship (1964-1985) to the neoliberal politics of the 1990s. Her recent essays critically reassess representations of gendered death and the visual motifs of precarity and stagnation in Latin American cinema and visual culture.

With over a decade of experience in publishing, Lima has edited books and magazines for numerous publishing houses, museums, and research institutes, including the Brazilian Center of Analysis and Planning (Cebrap). Additionally, she has served as a program coordinator for the Los Angeles Review of Books Publishing Workshop. She is also a curator for Travessias–Brazilian Film Festival at the Northwest Film Forum in Seattle, WA.