Desvios de olhar : as aparições de figurantes no cinema novo

Abstract

The present research intends to examine the images of extras in the fictional films from the early years of the Cinema Novo (1962-1967). Through an analysis focused on the apparitions of these local inhabitants from the villages where filming took place, we tried to enlighten how potencies emerge in the images bequeathed by this body of work, enabled to confront stereotyping, expose singularities and brush history against the grain. In methodological terms, this research centers in the plasticity of images, that is, how the faces, bodies, gestures and voices of the extras are presented. Forthwith, three analytical dimensions of approach to these figurations will be highlighted (apparition, crossing and deviation), with the objetive of describing and interpreting how the aesthetic operations accomplished by the films captured the extras. Although the research evoques a series of films from the early years of the Cinema Novo, as well as others from previous eras, its main corpus includes Os fuzis (1964), by Ruy Guerra, and O padre e a moça (1966), by Joaquim Pedro de Andrade. Through investigations about the apparitions of extras in these works, we try to highlight how the Cinema Novo represented a rupture from previous forms of figurations of the people in the brazilian cinema, by creating images that – on the opposite of procedures of stereotyping – were able to expose a resistance against the social oppressions imposed upon them.