Cinema and society: about the military dictatorship in Brazil
Author: Gomes Leme, Caroline , carolinegomesleme@gmail.com
Department: Sociologia
University: UNICAMP - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Brazil
Supervisor: Marcelo Siqueira Ridenti
Year of completion: 2011
Language of dissertation: portuguese
Keywords:
Brazilian cinema
, Brazilian History
, military dictatorship in Brazi
Areas of Research:
Visual Sociology
, Communication, Knowledge and Culture
Abstract
From 1979 to today, the military dictatorship has been theme of a significant number of movies. Analyze this filmography is to examine how the past has been reframed, what aspects are being obliterated, what are ambiguities and tensions that underlie the interpretation of socio-historical process. This research proposes to study the relationship between cinema and society with respect to the socially and culturally constructed enunciations about the period of military rule in Brazil (1964-1985). The object of investigation are the feature-length films released between 1979 and 2009 that relate to the theme of military dictatorship in Brazil. It is assumed that the movies, as cultural productions, can be considered legitimate and differentiated sources for investigate the society, since they are constitutive of social reality and produce meanings, values and propositions expressed by its own construction. It is guided in the concept of culture from Raymond Williams (2000)´s cultural materialism and is based essentially on Pierre Sorlin (1985, 1994)´s theoretical and methodological framework. It is done a broad and grounded survey of the filmography that deals with the Brazilian military dictatorship and is dedicated a closer attention to the following films: E agora, José? Tortura do sexo (Ody Fraga, 1980); Paula – A história de uma subversiva (Francisco Ramalho Jr., 1980); Nunca fomos tão felizes (Murilo Salles, 1984); Corpo em delito (Nuno Cesar Abreu, 1990); Ação entre amigos (Beto Brant, 1998); A terceira morte de Joaquim Bolívar (Flávio Cândido, 1999) e Zuzu Angel (Sérgio Rezende, 2006), which correspond to a broad range of cinematic possibilities.
