The present thesis investigates the interrelations between Brazilian culture and cinema in the construction and transmission of imaginaries surrounding black women, considering their unique historical experience and the strategies of black women's resistance as possible mediation elements of these audiovisual repertoires and their regimes of visibility. In order to do that and by applying contributions from cultural studies, feminist critique, film theory, and black feminism, this research analyses three fiction films: Cacá Diegues' Orfeu (1999), Sérgio Goldenberg's Bendito fruto (2004), and João Daniel Tikhomiroff's Besouro (2009). One of these productions is also the object of a reception study which applies Stuart Hall's encoding/decoding model to discussion groups in order to associate filmic representation and reception, distinct but interconnected domains in the ongoing circuit of production of meaning. Grounded on cinema's role as a product and a producer of imaginaries, the filmic analysis reveals a predominance of preconceived images of black women when it comes to body and sexuality, to the spatial, social, and symbolic movements and displacements affected by the merging of racism, sexism, and social inequality, even though creative strategies also emerge from the construction of black female characters as far as their relations of affection and sense of belonging are concerned, as well as their ability to act, all of which are explored in filmic space, in narrative construction, and in audiovisual language elements. The reception study of Bendito fruto by three discussion groups also brought forth this relation of force between the established meanings and new interpretative possibilities which rely on participants' personal experiences and affective identifications with other audiovisual and televised representations. Therefore, the combined investigation of the film, its reception practices, and the selection of gender and race as analytical categories enables the debate on the recognition of black women in Brazilian cinema and interracial relations.