Contemporary subaltern Brazilian cinema

Violence and subjectivities in Arábia and A vizinhança do tigre

Abstract

The article dives into the constructions of violence and its connections with prison and drug dealing in Brazilian cinema produced in 2010, in a historical perspective with films about the theme realeased in the late 1990s and beginning of the 2000s. The chosen timeframe encompasses a reconfiguration in the places of speech in Brazilian cinema in the years of 2010, made possible by the changes in cultural policies and in the funding of cinema in the 2000s. From this reconfiguration, it is possible to identify a change in the look into the violence suffered in the poor parts of the country and in jail when compared with the movies produced during the Retomada and Post-Retomada periods in Brazilian cinema. Therefore, we elected Arábia (2017), by Affonso Uchoa and João Dumans, and A vizinhança do tigre (2014), by Affonso Uchoa, as main corpus of the compared analysis with Carandiru (2003), by Hector Babenco, and Noticias de uma guerra particular (1999), by João Moreira Salles and Kátia Lund. Targetting the historical parallel, we use the genealogical method elaborated by Michel Foucault (2016), which offers categories for the analysis inside and outside of the film, articulating the micro record of audiovisual work with its conditions of historical and political possibilities. Through the analysis of the films, we conclude that Arábia and A vizinhança do tigre untie themselves from the violence appeal given to the poor parts of the country in the decade before, showing, instead, the life strategies of the characters before the violent structuring of power, having the day to day struggle to survive and the chance to dream about other possible worlds as the central theme of the films.