Brazilian cinema as an instrument of political debate

Materialities, circulations and noises in Vazante

Abstract

This article seeks to analyze the circulation of Vazante (Daniela Thomas, 2017) through the noises it mobilized, especially after the 50th Brasilia Festival, a decisive event for the repercussion of the main interpretive key’s film. With the methodological proposal of retracing the circulation of the work by reconstructing film reception, this article aims to understand how contemporary Brazilian cinema acquires political contours and becomes an instrument of a debate already present in the public space, but enhanced by audiovisual. The text begins by detailing the materiality of film, in an aesthetic-narrative conception that seeks verisimilitude as its main resource. Then, from a theoretical and methodological perspective grounded on communities of interpretation and deliberation, it looks back at the events and repercussions that determined how the film would be received in Brazil. Finally, it synthesizes a network of noises that originated in the debate about the film but has been expanded into multiple possibilities of interpretations, in dialogue with the political and social context.