Nos meandros do arquivo e da história: (des)caminhos da memória nos filmes-ensaio de João Moreira Salles (2007-2017)

Abstract

This thesis presents a research on affective cartographies constructed with archival footage in the documentary essays by João Moreira Salles, Santiago (2007) and No Intenso Agora (2017). From his extensive production as a documentary filmmaker, screenwriter and producer of Brazilian cinema, we highlight these two titles to compose the main corpus of this research due to its autobiographical nature and the ways in which, in each production, an introspective look at how the filmmaker's personal memories are mobilized and for his family dramas, using archival footage in the manner of the essay film. Such films build a historical perspective on the past from an approach that enhances memory and history, moving between the dimensions of the private and the collective. Methodologically, based on film analysis, the argument refers to the critical evaluation of these works to an expanded film corpus that includes the director's filmography and cultural productions with which it dialogues, as well as extra filmic materials, such as additional information contained on DVDs, publicity posters, interviews, journalistic essays, film critics, reviews and articles in print and available on the internet. Thereby, we identify how the director develops in his last films the elaboration of autobiographical, family and collective memories through cinema, creating narratives in the form of itineraries, scripts or paths, in which the figuration of spaces as an image is fundamental for the construction of the historical sense of the narrated experiences. Keywords: cartography; documentary; essay film; archival footage; João Moreira Salles.