Entre luz e sombra: esporte, lazer e política em produções cinematográficas na URSS e na Alemanha no entreguerras (1918-1939)

Abstract

Among other possibilities, cinema is also a phenomenon of mass communication, one that can be mobilized for political purposes. The use of cinema for political propaganda, however, is not new. It was in the interwar period (1918–1939) that this medium received particular attention. Several governments invested in developing this mass communication tool for explicitly political ends. For example, in Italy, Benito Mussolini created LUCE (L’Unione Cinematografica Educativa) to oversee the production of fascist newsreels. In Portugal, during the Salazarist regime, this role of promoting pro-regime productions fell to António Ferro, then secretary of national propaganda (Pereira, 2003). Yet it was in Germany and the USSR that these possibilities were most fully explored and intensified. However, cinema was not the only medium used by governments and political actors to convey ideas and values to the masses. The political use of sport and leisure is neither recent nor rare, as evidenced in the research of Cornelsen (2023) and Melo (2005). In light of this, the general aim of this study is to analyze the representations of leisure and sport in political propaganda films produced in Germany and the USSR during the interwar period (1918–1939). Its specific objectives are: to contextualize cinema, cultural and artistic movements, leisure, and sport during the interwar years—more specifically by comparing Germany and the USSR; to analyze and compare the selected films with emphasis on their representations of sport and leisure; and to reflect on the appropriation of sport and leisure by political forces in the interwar context, as well as the continuities and possibilities such appropriations hold for the present. To accomplish these goals, the study employs a methodology that articulates Cinema and History, a process that supports an interpretation of the films not limited to their surface elements, but one that considers the specificities of cinematic language and the tensions operating among the cultural agents involved. In addition, external documents were examined to substantiate the proposed reflections. An analysis of the representations found in the six films from the period reveals how images make it possible to glimpse the dynamics of a given society and its consequent disputes and tensions. Sport and leisure emerge in these films as privileged terrains of struggle, and the ways in which they are mobilized disclose distinct projects, values, and desires for restoration or transformation. None of these representations are neutral or merely illustrative; they bring to light both lived realities and projected futures.