Poster art for Elite Squad, showing Saturday night at 8 at RISD’s new Chace Center in Providence.

Kevin Gaor

PROVIDENCE — Let’s see. What do we know about Brazilian movies?

Well, there’s director Fernando Meirelles’s 1991 City of God.

Some of you may remember director Bruno Barreto’s racy Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands from 1978, starring fireball Sonia Braga.

Speaking of fireballs, there was Carmen Miranda. But she took the world by storm way back in the 1940s and, anyway, although she grew up in Brazil, she was born in Portugal.

And then there’s . . . well, not too much more.

Brown University hopes to change all that starting tonight with a celebration of Brazilian films and culture in the second annual CineBRASIL, running through Saturday on the Brown campus. Produced in collaboration with Cinemateca Brasileira in Sao Paulo, there will be seven feature films, four shorts and for tonight’s opening, a documentary made in Brazil by two Brown students.

Plans for Nos do Cinema Project (We of the Cinema), which goes on screen at 6 p.m. today in McMillan Hall 117 at 167 Thayer St., were hatched at last year’s CineBRASIL. The two winners of the Oliver Kwon Grant program — Chaney Harrison and Finn Yarbrough — set off for South America to make a documentary about Rio de Janeiro’s Cinema Nosso film project for underprivileged youth. The Brown filmmakers followed six of them through the streets of Rio as they struggled to overcome obstacles in their pursuit of cinema. Director Yarbrough and producer Harrison will introduce their film and take questions from the audience afterwards.

Tomorrow’s screenings, all at McMillan Hall, include the 4 p.m. showing of Critico (Critic), Kleber Mendonca Filho’s documentary in which 70 filmmakers and critics discuss the age-old conflict between the artist and the critical observer.

It will be followed on screen at 6 by Andrea Tonacci’s Bang Bang, about an actor who can’t distinguish between his personal life and his movie character. It will be shown in Portuguese without subtitles. Tonacci will be on hand to answer questions following the screening.

At 8:30 producer Jared Ian Goldman and director Jason Kohn will introduce their Manda Bala (Send a Bullet) and conduct a Q&A session afterwards. Manda Bala weaves plot elements that include corrupt politicians, kidnappings and plastic surgery into a tale of corruption that has changed the face of the country

The first three Saturday screenings will go on at McMillan, with O Aborto dos Outros (Someone Else’s Abortion), a documentary exploring Brazil’s abortion laws, kicking things off at 1:30 p.m.

It will be followed at 3:30 by Tonacci’s Serras de Desordem (The Hills of Disorder), about a nomadic Brazilian named Carapiru, who wanders the mountains for 10 years after his village was attacked by local farmers. When he is finally captured and reunited with his son after a decade living and working in big cities while on the run, he finds it difficult to reconnect with his nomadic lifestyle. Tonacci will do a Q&A following the screening.

At 6 Saturday, the film will be Simonal: Ninguem Save O Duro Que De (Simonal: No One Knows How Tough It Was), a documentary about Simonal, who became a pop-star millionaire until he was ostracized for a crime he swore he did not commit.

Saturday’s closing night screening at 8 will be at the Rhode Island School of Design’s new Chace Center, 20 North Main St. Jose Padilha’s Tropa de Elite (Elite Squad), winner of the Golden Bear at the 2008 Berlin International Film Festival, is described as being about “cops, crooks and the (very few) people in between” by the filmmaker.

All films, except Bang Bang, have English subtitles. Tickets are free to Brown and RISD students, faculty and staff; $5 for other students, faculty and staff with ID, as well as for senior citizens; $8 for the general public.

mjanuson@projo.com