Imagens recorrentes do operário brasileiro : montagens em dois tempos de cinema

Abstract

This thesis seeks to locate and understand how some images of workers survive and are updated in works of Brazilian cinema, specifically the characters from factory and construction work. Two historical moments of audiovisual production are considered: the period from 1978-1983 and from 2015-2020. In addition to a more numerous concentration of titles, both present particular scenarios of the reality of the Brazilian worker. The first takes place during the period of major strikes, especially those in the ABC region of São Paulo, during the military dictatorship. The second comprises the period after the parliamentary coup, with labour reforms and profound changes in the world of work at a global level. As an object of study, we incorporated sixteen films into the research. Among them, feature and short films, documentaries and works of fiction. Including the subjective instance of the researcher, we proposed a methodology that appropriates the images and offers montages of fragments to be analyzed. From the films, facts, gestures, elements and/or spaces that are repeated among the selected works were cut out. From these recurrences, the images were grouped in the montages into categories, in which the times addressed in the research coexist. The understanding of the dialectical image developed by Walter Benjamin (2009) underlies this process, as well as the surviving image in agreement with Georges Didi-Huberman (2011; 2013). The concepts of central image, duration and crystallization of time from the clash between images are better understood in the light of Henri Bergson (2006; 2010) and Gilles Deleuze (2012; 2018). The montages and their categories, which are not intended to be definitive, allowed for reflections based on three lines of trends that systematize the process of image analysis in the research. They are: I) the spaces where the worker performs his work and the relationship with the body and its consequences, such as exhaustion and the accident; II) workers in confrontation (with each other or with higher hierarchical instances, such as bosses and the State), collective manifestations and leadership figures; III) the characters outside their work spaces, in their movements and in their intimate relationships. Throughout the analysis process, reflections on what belongs to the collective and the individual run through. The issue underlines different realities of the worker, sometimes organized in massive fronts, sometimes individualized by the transformations of the world of work. In parallel, greater attention to the self, incorporating angles that include subjective and identity aspects, presents layers that make the portrait more complex. In the end, it is notable the recurrence of certain images in these narratives and their specificities that, between one time and another, manifest the reality of the worker in different contexts. In addition, the montages capture the aesthetic trends that cinema, in different periods, adopts to express it.