Film constellations - reflexions on a comparative method of cinema studies

• Grant number: 18/20110-9
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: February 01, 2019
• End date: December 09, 2019
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Arts - Cinema
• Principal Investigator: Ismail Norberto Xavier
• Grantee: Mariana Souto de Melo Silva
• Host Institution: Escola de Comunicações e Artes (ECA). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This postdoctoral project aims to investigate a type of comparative methodology in the audiovisual field. It acknowledges the need to reflect on the connections between films and to search for methodological paths that take into account a multiplicity of objects, which demands specific approaches and strategies, different from the ones involved in working with a single object. Taking inspiration from astronomy and the notion of constellation in Walter Benjamin, we intend to forge our own concept of "film constellations", adapted to the specificities of the cinema. Conceiving a corpus of analysis as a constellation favors a relational conception, which sees dialogues, tensions and affinities between works, putting them in relation of otherness with each other. By promoting the approximation of resources used in other fields of study, such as comparative literature and the natural sciences, we seek to build solid foundations for the comparative exercise in cinema, and at the same time encourage creativity in academic studies, stimulating the relations of dispersed objects, but which in the comparison can illuminate each other.