Na encruzilhada do sentido: a representação de pais e mães de santo no cinema brasileiro de ficção pós-1988

Abstract

This work intends to understand the representation of “fathers” and “mothers” of afro-brazilian religions in Brazilian fictional feature films, which were shown in commercial exhibition halls between 1988 and 2020. The path of study of representation adopted here dialogues with the horizon of Cultural Studies, which understand communication as a component of the cultural circuit, which actively acts as a generator of meaning and mediator of relationships. Based on Stuart Hall's (2016) reflections on representation, on Robert Stam's (2003) methodological guidelines on studies of representation in cinema and considering the relevance of the spectator's social place when viewing the films, the analysis in this work took into account: the filmic text, contextual elements and, whenever possible, the factors that condition different positions of subject (FOUCAULT, 1980) of the director and the spectator in front of the film. Fourteen films with “fathers” and “mothers” of afro-brazilian religions were identified and analyzed: Orfeu (Diegues, 1999), Cidade de Deus (Meirelles and Lund, 2002), Viva Sapato! (Lacerda, 2003), Cafundó (Bueno and Betti, 2007), Só Deus Sabe / Sólo Diós Sabe (Bolado, 2006), O maior amor do mundo (Diegues, 2006), Nzinga Atabaques (Bezerra, 2006), Ó paí ó (Gardenberg, 2007), Besouro (Tikhomiroff, 2009), Quincas Berro D'Água (Machado, 2010), Jardim das folhas sagradas (Ribeiro, 2011), Um assalto de fé (Amaral, 2011), Irmã Dulce (Amorim, 2014) ) and Linda de morrer (D'Amato, 2015). Adopting the epistemology of the crossroads (NOGUEIRA, 2020) and the multiplicity of meanings that constitute Exu as a horizon of work, welcoming contradiction and doubt as generators of meanings, the study showed that most of the characters found are secondary and the presence of stereotypes is recurrent. However, it also showed that even in hegemonic productions there are, in some cases, possibilities of reading that point to the traditional role of the great matriarchs of Candomblé, in line with Ferreira and Montoro (2014) and Silva and Coelho (2020). In addition, the research found the emergence of counter-hegemonic meanings in films that have black history and culture in Brazil as a central theme.