Salas/celas, sinas e cenas: o cinema no contexto prisional

Abstract

Cinema brings in itself the power to lead the audience to have contact with different cultures and ways of being and happening to be in the world. In this sense, the educational function of the seventh art is unquestionable, being it a leading wire of the present research held in an educational environment of a prison unit in a city in Minas Gerais. Taking the concept of mediation in Vigotski, the investigation has had as objective to understand the possibilities of learning and development brought by the cinema as a learning mediator instrument. The research was held with two groups of students from a prison school: first primary and high school, with an average of 15 students/prisoners per group. Twenty two sessions were organized every fifteen days with the showing of domestic and foreign films, selected by the criterion of presenting innovations in the cinema language, be it in the plot, in the photography and/or another specific aspect of this universe. During the sessions, we have tried to promote the debate from the themes brought by the movies, instigating dialogue among the students. The methodology of research-action has led this study, once it meets the proposal of data building as well as intervention in the context of reality, the material concreteness of the subjects in the research and, in this sense; the researcher is not only an observer, but participant. We have also taken the cinema to the prison as a cultural activity, taking into consideration the specificities of the cinema universe and the limits of access to such activity imposed by confining. The prisoners were able to have contact with the cinema as art, tool and mediator instrument which has given voice to their thoughts and reflections. By watching the films, the participants could understand in such a deeper and critical way the social context in which they are, remodeling the meaning of their realities and, at the same time, developing interesting reflections about the own cinema language. As a cultural good which should be amply made available to all the subjects, this study points to the cinema as a privileged possibility in the process of humanizing in the prison context.