Uma cinecidade latino-americana: um olhar distópico sobre o espaço urbano

Abstract

This study seeks to elucidate how Latin American metropolises representations form a continuous symbolic landscape and a single imaginary environment, which refers to the signification resulting from the production of its own cultural sense and common for cinematographically themed cities. Classify this cinematic equivalent of urban space as cinecity. In the Latin American case, specifically, this is an approach in which urban representations are predominantly dystopian and marked by social problems such as unemployment, structural inequality and urban violence, thus composing a common city in crisis. The study results from the articulation of some theoretical assumptions built to think about the relationship between metropolis and cinema (COSTA, 2002, 2005, 2008; PRYSTHON, 2006; KRACAUER, 1960; MORIN, 2005), together with the idea of continuous cities developed by Italo Calvino (1990). This articulation of ideas is applied here to reflect on the image of six cities: São Paulo, Buenos Aires, Caracas, Bogotá, Mexico City and Managua. To this end, the films Linha de Passe (Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas, 2008), Hermano: uma fábula sobre o futebol (Marcel Rasquin, 2010), Las Tetas de Mi Madre (Carlos Zapata, 2015), Elefante Branco (Pablo Trapero, 2009), La Yuma ( Florence Jaugey, 2009) and Dias de Graça (Everardo Valerio Gout, 2011) are analyzed, where each represents one of the cities investigated. The analysis of these urban representations showed that, in the contemporary context, there is a significant proportion of film productions, within latin America, which looks at the city under the same lenses: the metropolis as the space of social degradation marked by structural problems. The origin of this common universe, according to my research, is found in the underdevelopment and dependence of Latin America. Inheritance, in this case, of a colonial past, of a peripheral modernity (SOUZA, 2009) and the deepening of a neoliberal agenda.