Cinema Negro: uma necessidade política e afetiva

Abstract

This paper analyzes some parameters of Brazilian Black cinema with one of the initial bases a brief social-historical contextualization of African black cinema, in order to reflect on how these impacts have influenced the construction of this cinema, since both are colonized territories and suffered with the process of racial oppression and, as spectators, these cinemas had access to a media imagery production that have contributed and still contribute to the maintenance of this project of domination, reflecting on the need to focus on the broad protagonism in these productions as a strategy of survival. In 1997, the São Paulo International Short Film Festival held the section "Foco", where for the first time there was a Brazilian festival with a program intended only for works made by black filmmakers from various countries. Alongside this, or even before that, Brazilian black filmmakers such as Jeferson De, Rogerio de Moura, Ari Candido, Noel Carvalho, Billy Castilho, Daniel Santiago, Lilian Solá Santiago and Luiz Paulo Lima had been debating the negative image of black people on screens, and already believed that only a direct intervention in the audiovisual chain made by black professionals, could reverse this situation .(CARVALHO and DOMINGUES 2018). Already in the year 2000, in the same festival, in its 11th edition, there was the program Dogma Feijoada - Black Diversity Show, which in addition to bringing 6 Brazilian films of black directors, had a part destined to the debate of the Manifesto written by filmmaker Jeferson De, entitled Genesis of the Brazilian Black Cinema. This document had six guidelines that defined what black cinema is: (1) the film has to be directed by a Brazilian black director; (2) the protagonist must be black; (3) the theme of the film must be related to the Brazilian black culture; (4) The film must have a workable schedule. Urgent films; (5) black (or not) stereotypical characters are prohibited; (6) the script should privilege the Brazilian common black; (7) superheroes or bandits should be avoided. We transform, then, the first guideline of the manifesto our basic parameter, that is, the focus of the research are cinematographic productions where the black people occupy the chair of the direction. Another motivation for the research was the data released by the Affirmative Action Multidisciplinary Study Group (GEEMA) in research focused on the box office cinema of Brazil, which states the inequality of gender and race, unlike independent cinema, which becomes the sector where most of these black artists can produce cinema. From comparisons of 100 films produced from 2010 to 2019 we can identify some characteristics that may point out some common motivations and conditions that may or may not define lines of thought and concepts. These reflections were defined in the chapters: “The Need to Document” which reflects on the form and content of documentary production; the chapter “By the right to subjectivity” that focuses on productions that have their diverse format and do not fit a traditional narrative line; “Quantitative Growth and Geographic Representations” which is the space for analysis regarding the locality and quantitative progress of these productions ”; “From affectivity to clash” that highlights organic and emerging cinema and how these narratives are told; and lastly, “Guerrilla Cinema or also Emergency Cinema” already quoted by Jeferson De in his manifesto.