Dissolution narratives. Contemporary problems to the concept of national cinematography

• Grant number: 15/21531-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: January 01, 2016
• End date: June 30, 2019
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Arts - Cinema
• Principal Investigator: Eduardo Victorio Morettin
• Grantee: Lúcia Ramos Monteiro
• Host Institution: Escola de Comunicações e Artes (ECA). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 18/21028-4 - Dissolution narratives and the visibility of the cinematic 'fond': questions of film, history and aesthetics, BE.EP.PD

Abstract

This project aims to think about the question of "national" in contemporary cinema. At a time of crisis in the concepts of "nation" and "nationalism", those notions continue to be used in the cinematographic context, both by historiography and film studies, and by festivals and retrospectives. In opposition to the so-called "foundational narratives" (SOMMER, 2004), in which domestic happiness and national ideals are intertwined, in the films we will study the "individual" and the "national" spheres continue to be linked, but in a negative way. Because of that, we propose the concept of "national dissolution narratives", and its validity needs to be attested (or refused), based on the film analyses to be developed, the profound study of the bibliography and the theoretical reflexion. Films that are not "central" in regards of cinematographic canons - they come from Brazil, China, Equator, the Philippines and Taiwan - and whose visibility concentrates on international festivals and specialized critics constitute the preliminary corpus. The films chosen face national questions based on some "foundational narratives" codes, in order to subvert them. Among our preliminary hypotheses, there is the relation between an interest on the crisis of an idea of nation, an identity crisis, and what can be considered a crisis of the cinema itself, in a moment when digital supports of capture and exhibition become predominant and when cinema as an institution and as a physical space does not prevail anymore among the possibilities of appreciation of the moving image (GAUDREAULT and MARION, 2013).