A Panorama of Brazilian documentary film activism in the 2010s

Abstract

This article analyzes Brazilian documentaries from the last decade, investigating their narrative and visual strategies and relating them to emerging video activism practices. Referred to here as ‘documentary cine-activism’, this set of films belongs to the context of militant cinema, updated by contemporary social activism and new image broadcasting technologies via the internet. It is divided into two trends: the first one resulting from the events of June 2013, which street demonstrations are elaborated imagetically, questions the political disputes that occurred through these images. The second trend refers to the developments of the aforementioned event, focusing on the student strikes of 2015 and the 2016 coup d'état, in which Workers’ Party (PT) President Dilma Rousseff — in office since 2011, and reelected in 2014 — was ousted. The conclusion examines how new technologies are transforming militant cinema, emphasizing the individual perspectives and narrative approaches of political actors directly involved in the events. It explores the diverse ways in which these actors engage with and recollect archival images, contrasting their use with hegemonic media, thereby integrating them into an active political strategy.