Representations of LGBT+ ageing in Latin American, USA and Canadian films from 1990 to 2020

• Grant number: 25/03358-0
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Start date: July 01, 2025
• End date: June 30, 2027
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Psychology - Social Psychology
• Principal Investigator: Fernando Silva Teixeira Filho
• Grantee: Fernando Silva Teixeira Filho
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências e Letras (FCL-ASSIS). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Assis. Assis , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Background: Based on an ethical-aesthetic-political panorama of dissent from cisheteronormative standards on sexualities and gender identities, the aim is to describe the ways in which LGBTphobias are constituted and the ways in which it is possible to escape from it. Method: This documental research aims to identify, describe and analyse the representations of LGBT+ ageing in the cinematography produced in Latin America, the United States and Canada between 1990 and 2020. Mainly the movies that were shown at the explosion of LGBT film festivals, specifically MixBrasil da Diversidade. We hope to undertake: a) an analysis of the ethical-aesthetic-political discursive lines that underpin the expressions and experiences of LGBT+ ageing as technologies of gender and power; b) an identification and description of the confrontations with LGBTphobia undertaken by the characters. The corpus of the study will be films screened at these festivals from 1990 to 2020 that contain LGBT+ characters aged 60 and more. All films that meet this requirement will be analysed, regardless of the social markers of difference. In order to analyse the data, we will use poetic analysis and film analysis as tools to support interpretations based on Cultural, Decolonial, Image, Gender and Queer Theories. Results: We aim to identify and understand how, over these three decades, transgressions have been produced in this context against cisgender, heteronormative, racist and ageist models of ageing, in order to establish relationships between these new expressions and aesthetic experiences of the body, image and finitude, contributing to interventions by health professionals, such as psychologists, with this population in the clinical, social and cultural fields, in order to prevent and/or combat stigmas and prejudices that still exist regarding the LGBT+ population. (AU)