Ancestry, "yellow peril" and "model minority": an ethnography of self-representations of Japanese-Brazilian filmmakers

• Grant number: 24/07105-7
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: February 01, 2025
• End date: July 31, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology
• Principal Investigator: Christiano Key Tambascia
• Grantee: Shiro Yuri Takeuti Crull
• Host Institution: Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The relationship between anthropology and cinema was consolidated during the 20th century, with audiovisuals as both a tool for ethnographic research and an object for analysing the field. Based on this common ground between film and anthropological studies, this research aims to ethnographically analyse the relationships that yellow filmmakers weave with their ancestry through the films they direct, script and/or produce. To this end, I will analyse some of the films made by these filmmakers between 2016 and 2024, when there is a noticeable increase in productions with these characteristics. It is proposed that this analysis consider the social, cultural, political, economic, aesthetic and technological contexts, as well as elements internal to the works. The proposed field research will also take into account face-to-face and online events about this cinema and interviews with the directors in order to understand different aspects of the creation of their films and what we understand in this research as a new yellow cinema produced in Brazil. This denomination encompasses the research hypothesis that not only considers the significant production of the aforementioned period, but also the debates that have been reconfiguring and problematising yellow racialisation in Brazil by a new generation of filmmakers who, unlike their predecessors, include debates about sexuality and gender dissidence in their questioning of race. The online spaces used to publicise and circulate the films will also be researched, with the understanding that they are not merely neutral supports, but are created and used for certain purposes. In them, we will try to understand how the films studied are publicised, as well as the appropriation of these media and spaces by the filmmakers.