Brazilian Movies Research Articles

Imagens do trabalho doméstico no cinema brasileiro: um inventário de ficções entre 1958-2019

Brazil is the country with the largest number of domestic workers in the world. It’s clear that the positions occupied by a domestic worker in Brazilian society are surrounded by three main factors (gender, race and class) and this intersection creates a place of vulnerability and subalternity.The cinema and movies produced by a country are a place for the images and representations which a society creates of itself. (Aumont 2012). Acknowledging the extreme vulnerability inflicted upon domestic workers, how Brazilian movies portrayed the domestic workers: creating and reinforcing stereotypes or breaking them? This is an important question, because the way a character or a series of characters are portrayed in movies reveals how a society perceives these groups. This work’s methodology is inspired by the works of two researchers, Sonia Roncador (2008) e Mariana Souto (2016). For this communication, the intention is to craft an inventory of domestic workers images and representation in Brazilian movies. The selected body of work is composed of fictional feature-length films, released from 1958 to 2019, in which the domestic workers are the main or very prominent characters. With these variety of movies, it is possible to establish comparisons, frictions and dialogues; there also patterns amongst movies from the same period or production cycles, as chanchadas, pornochanchadas or contemporary movies. The intention is to perceive relations between the movies and also categorize them based on the stereotypes they promote or how they break these stereotypes.

Faroeste brasileiro: a boi, a bala e a bíblia.

Throughout the years 1953-1979, bloomed a popular Brazilian cycle of films closely related to the North-American Western gender. Notwithstanding, these Westerns fell quickly into oblivion, mainly due their lack of aesthetics innovations and their undisguised commercial drive. Nevertheless, once it was bound to satisfy the collective phantasies of its audience, the corpus of these films displayed a plethora of representations pertaining to their sociocultural, historical and political environment. They provided a profuse amount of audiovisual material open to researches in a variety of fields – gender representation, psychosocial culture, authoritarian politics and ethics – which are still at work in actual Brazilian social, institutional and political practices. And since they were bound to please a masculine audience, Brazilian Western movies framed a striking fictional world underlined by the psychoanalytical theme of the figuration of women as the absolute model of alterity. Women were usually placed as imaginary emblems of private property, democratic values and/or Christian faith, which, by their turn, performed dramatically under three signifiers: the “Bull”, the “Bullet”, and the “Bible”. Depicted not as proper characters and deprived of dramatic motivations, they were, by consequence, liable to specific modalities of physical violence – abduction, torture, rape and murder. Cruelty against the feminine body blended together the misogynistic bias of Brazilian culture with the masculine impotence during the authoritarian dictatorship epoch in a framework which could only be furnished by the imaginary themes and structures of Western movie.

The antisocial personality disorder in the Brazilian movies

ABSTRACT Objective: The antisocial personality disorder (APD) is one theme of interest for psychiatry/mental health students and professionals. The access to psychopathology aspects by means of movies is able to improve the understanding about these disorders. This study aimed at evaluates the frequency of APD and of its diagnostic criteria in the Brazilian cinema for teaching purposes. Methods: The method consisted of survey sampling (for convenience, once the study is extracted from another greater project); use of a diagnostic instrument and analysis of the results. Results: 44.73% of the personalities were diagnosed with APD. All the diagnostic criteria for APD were present. The most frequent criterion was the practice of illegal acts. Impulsivity was associated with aggressiveness in 29.4% of the cases and with the use of psychoactive substances in almost 30% of the cases. 35.3% of the characters had a premature and violent death. Conclusion: The research enabled the identification of APD diagnostic criteria in the Brazilian cinema. Many scenes were able to represent the diagnosis clearly. The data proved to be sufficient in indicate the potentiality of the material as a didactic and pedagogical foundation.

O falar de Si e o falar do Outro no cinema brasileiro: Cinco vezes favela e 5x favela, agora por nós mesmos

Neste artigo, é feita uma breve análise de dois filmes brasileiros, Cinco vezes favela (1962) e 5x favela – agora por nós mesmos (2010). Apesar de terem propostas similares – retratar as favelas do Rio de Janeiro e suas problemáticas –, os filmes operam de maneiras muito distintas na forma de representação. A hipótese é a de que isso ocorre porque os filmes têm realizadores de classes sociais diferentes e essa diferença implica em fazerem um filme sobre si ou sobre outros. Em 1962, cinco cineastas de classe média engajados com um projeto político de esquerda; em 2010, cinco diretores do próprio meio social representado no filme. O artigo também levanta alguns pontos da discussão sobre o lugar do intelectual em relação à arte popular e ao povo para quem essa arte se dirige. Para comparação direta, são escolhidos dois episódios, Pedreira de São Diogo e Arroz com feijão, dos filmes de 1962 e 2010, respectivamente, pois ambos trazem crítica e denúncia social, mas com teores bastante diversos de engajamento e didatismo.

Adolescent Characters and Alcohol Use Scenes in Brazilian Movies, 2000–2008

Quantitative structured assessment of 193 scenes depicting substance use from a convenience sample of 50 Brazilian movies was performed. Logistic regression and analysis of variance or multivariate analysis of variance models were employed to test for two different types of outcome regarding alcohol appearance: The mean length of alcohol scenes in seconds and the prevalence of alcohol use scenes. The presence of adolescent characters was associated with a higher prevalence of alcohol use scenes compared to nonalcohol use scenes. The presence of adolescents was also associated with a higher than average length of alcohol use scenes compared to the nonalcohol use scenes. Alcohol use was negatively associated with cannabis, cocaine, and other drugs use. However, when the use of cannabis, cocaine, or other drugs was present in the alcohol use scenes, a higher average length was found. This may mean that most vulnerable group may see drinking as a more attractive option leading to higher alcohol use.

Notas sobre o dispositivo no documentário contemporâneo

ResumoO trabalho investiga a potência do dispositivo enquanto estratégia criativa e política no documentário contemporâneo, adotando como recorte três filmes brasileiros recentes (Pacific, Rua de mão dupla e Câmara escura). Na análise, destacamos a vitalidade estética de cada obra - como elas enfrentam e sugerem alternativas para questões relevantes na prática documentária -, os pontos de convergência e distanciamento entre as produções, bem como as performances instigadas nos personagens pelo "efeito-câmera": condutas ambivalentes que oscilam entre o crescente anseio de exposição e o desejo de restabelecimento da intimidade. O percurso analítico parte de uma revisão do conceito de dispositivo para, em seguida, mensurar sua aplicação e resultado em cada filme.

O imaginário do mal no cinema brasileiro: as figuras abjetas da sociedade e seu modo de circulação

O artigo visa observar os trajetos de circulação de algumas figuras consideradas abjetas pelo imaginário cultural brasileiro: Exu e Pomba-gira, e suas relações com o que chamamos aqui de “lixo social”. Acompanhamos tais figuras através das personagens de três filmes brasileiros: Madame Satã, Cidade de Deus e Cafundó. Partindo da ideia de Circulação, segundo a qual a compreensão do trajeto efetuado pelas coisas é complexo e de difícil apreensão, recorremos a uma perspectiva histórico-social, mas também simbólico-cultural. Concluímos que o oculto é potencializador de uma força que permite a resistência, recorrência e ressurgência das figuras abjetas que nutrem o imaginário do mal brasileiro. Por fim, abrimos a perspectiva da alegria como um dos motores dessa força potencializada pelo oculto.

Substance Use and Misuse in Brazilian Movies (2000–2008)

Considering the absence of data on the appearance of drugs other than alcohol and tobacco in movie scenes, we decided to study the prevalence of portrayal of illicit drug use in a convenience sample of 50 Brazilian Movies. A total of 192 scenes (12h49′03″) meeting the inclusion criteria were identified and assessed in a structured manner. Despite several limitations regarding the nature of this comparison, we found that scenes show substance use and misuse almost similar to that in the general population, mainly alcohol (especially among people of low socioeconomic status), cannabis and inhalants. Main differences were found in cocaine and tranquilizers (over- and underexposure in movies, respectively).

Consuming visions: cinema, writing, and modernity in Rio de Janeiro

Consuming Visions explores the relationship between cinema and writing in early twentieth-century Brazil, focusing on how the new and foreign medium of film was consumed by a literary society in the throes of modernisation. Maite Conde places this relationship in the specific context of turn-of-the-century Rio de Janeiro, which underwent a radical transformation to a modern global city, becoming a concrete symbol of the country's broader processes of change and modernisation. Analysing an array of literary texts, from journalistic essays and popular women's novels to anarchist treatises and vaudeville plays, the author shows how the writers' encounters with the cinema were consistent with the significant changes taking place in the city. The arrival and initial development of the cinema in Brazil were part of the new urban landscape in which early Brazilian movies not only articulated the processes of the city's modernisation but also enabled new urban spectators - women, immigrants, a new working class, and a recently liberated slave population - to see, believe in, and participate in its future. In the process, these early movies challenged the power of the written word and of Brazilian writers, threatening the hegemonic function of writing that had traditionally forged the contours of the nation's cultural life. An emerging market of consumers of the new cultural phenomena - popular theatre, the department store, the factory, illustrated magazines - reflected changes that not only modernised literary production but also altered the very life and everyday urban experiences of the population. Consuming Visions is an ambitious and engaging examination of the ways in which mass culture can become an agent of intellectual and aesthetic transformation.

Imagem, raça e humilhação no espelho negro da nação: cultura visual, política e "pensamento negro" brasileiro durante a ditadura militar

Este artigo problematiza as relações entre cultura visual, "racialização" e novas sensibilidades políticas no Brasil de meados dos anos 1970 e princípios dos 1980 a partir das discussões da imagem e da representação do negro no cinema brasileiro. Observamos algumas das características da atualização e modificação da noção de raça no Brasil a partir da discussão sobre filmes brasileiros pelos representantes do que chamamos no texto de "pensamento negro", uma tradição reflexiva em formação que questionou como a intelectualidade brasileira concebia a cultura negra. A reflexão negra se apresenta num conjunto de escritos na imprensa nos quais desenvolveram uma retórica da imagem do negro como retórica de humilhação racial. A denúncia da humilhação negra na imagem produzida pelos brancos permitiu a constituição de uma nova identidade racial no Brasil.

A presença de “Iracema, uma transa amazônica” (1974) no cinema brasileiro

Configurando práticas discursivas presentes na hierarquia social brasileira, as categorias raciais encontram-se na estrutura dramática de diversos filmes nacionais. Este trabalho pretende analisar o filme Iracema, uma transa amazônica (1974), dos diretores Jorge Bodansky e Orlando Senna, para compreender como as retóricas do nacional e da raça complementam-se e se contradizem. Partimos da hipótese de que o filme articula uma transição entre duas formações discursivas: a do nacional-popular e a identitária.

O cinema, seu duplo e o tribunal em cena

Este artigo discute o problema da natureza dupla da imagem do cinema e da natureza unívoca do tribunal, particularmente em dois filmes brasileiros recentes, Juízo, o maior exige do menor, de Maria Augusta Ramos e Jogo de cena, de Eduardo Coutinho. Analisam no tema do duplo e do tribunal - da justiça e do cinema - questões relativas ao lugar do espectador diante das imagens midiáticas contemporâneas, aos sistemas de representação, aos modos singulares de produzir a verdade, que serão analisadas aqui, bem como o possível diálogo desses documentários com as obras de Kieslowski, Kiarostami e Makhmalbaf.

Cinema e Política: a representação do jornalismo e do marketing político no cinema brasileiro

O cinema brasileiro dos anos noventa busca diagnosticar as rapidas mudancas ocorridas no campo da comunicacao nesse periodo. O filme Doces Poderes, de Lucia Murat, mostra como o jornalismo brasileiro, quando submetido ao marketing politico e a publicidade, perde seu papel de fonte primaria de informacao e abre espaco para a noticia enquanto produto. Ainda que o filme aparentemente vise lancar um olhar critico sobre a situacao do jornalismo dos anos noventa, a linguagem cinematica e a estrutura narrativa nele usadas solapam seu intento, revelando assim as fragilidades e limitacoes do cinema brasileiro de vies politico.

Nem Tarzan, nem Emília: as aventuras do Jeca Tatu na tecnosfera

The synchronicity made possible by the media: between the global and the local, allows us today the convergence of two moments. It could suggest to us that the dream of setting the clock right with contemporarity was accomplished by periferic countries. Nevertheless, one aspect has been recurrent in the texts of Latin-american scholars and has fed the cinematoghraphic imagery: the abysm generated by the accelerated imposition of technological news coming from abroad associated to the fact that these countries do not know the secrets to manage these technologies. This article is a study on the motives that make the subject of anachronism a constant reference among us. Also, it is a study on how our nonsynchronism applied to hegemonic countries is understood by authors in different times. We promote the dialog among the texts of Oswald de Andrade, Octavio Paz, Martín-Barbero, Néstor García Canclini, Miltom Santos and also recent brazilian movies.

Psicopatologia no cinema brasileiro: um estudo introdutório

Brazilian movies from 1994 to 2004 were investigated in search of psychopathology scenes that might be useful for teaching purposes. Forty five movies from the period were seen, and 27 selected mainly with personality disorders, drug abuse and dependence, hallucination scenes. A recommendation of how to use them to teach psychopatology was made.