O ativismo negro por meio do cinema: ações e representações dentro e fora das telas

Abstract

In this research, I analyze historiography and filmography sources, namely, films, interviews, and government project grants to understand how Black filmmakers developed practices of political activism exercised “on-screen” and “off-screen” of the contemporary Brazilian and North American cinema. The subjects of this research are Black people that are “behind” the cameras, as well as their films. I investigate how these individuals recreate relevant themes (or subjects) for society, in particular for the Black population, on screen and considering especially the problematization of racism in its multiple manifestations. While analyzing the selected narratives and their production processes, I tried to select and give visibility to a significative group of Black Brazilian and Black North American filmmakers. For the most part, these works of cinematography demonstrate the historicity of the racial problematic in audiovisual format. Throughout this dissertation, I discuss the historical path of Black Cinema in Brazil and in the United States of America aiming to point out similarities, approximations and possible dialogues between them. Through that approach, I consider relevant differences between Black Cinema and black-themed cinema, as well as empowerment, that is, the process of enlargement of social and political possibilities for Black subjects (in) and through cinema. Along the reflections (or among findings), I observe that, nowadays, there is a Black Cinema movement that is improving in different ways. The cinematographic productions within this social movement have been widely shared, watched and recognized as a cinematographic genre. In this sense, it can be seen precisely as a political movement that contributes vigorously to the transformation of the lives of black people in the Americas as well as to the deconstruction of codes that have established and reiterated historical exclusions and inequalities in society.