Banca de DEFESA: FRANCISCO GABRIEL DE ALMEIDA RÊGO

THE MISE EN SCÈNE IN FOUR DOCUMENTARIES BY THE MBYA-GUARANI DE CINEMA COLLECTIVE: MOBILITY AND STABILITY IN SCENE SPACE

Mise en scène, Indigenous Documentary, Mbya-Guarani, Film Analysis

In this research, we seek to analyze the mise en scène in four documentaries made by Coletivo Mbya-Guarani de Cinema, members of the Vídeo nas Aldeias  (VNA) project. We intend to analyze the following feature films: Duas aldeias, uma caminhada (2008), Bicicletas de Nhanderú (2011), Desterro Guarani (2011), Tava, a Casa de Pedra (2012). Through an approach to cinematography and scenography, we seek to analyze the space, devices and subjects present in the documentary scene. In this way, we intend to dimension the staging strategies concerning mise en scène, in order to understand its meanings, assemblages and a political perspective common to the studied filmography. We analyze the characteristics concerning documentaries, trying to understand the specificities inherent to cinematographic and scenographic practices in a dialectic that we point out as fundamental for the investigation of mise en scène in documentary. Thus, we seek to walk in two analytical approaches about this concept: 1) a specific perspective having as the films analyzed here; and 2) a more general conceptualization in order to support some categories that we think are important for the study of the phenomenon of mise en scéne in documentary. From the perspective of the corpus studied here, we seek to analyze this category as representative of the ethnographic aspects common to the Mbya-Guarani, capable of revealing an articulation between significant aspects of this culture, in a proposal that centralizes both the subjects and collectivity through the space registration process for the represented indigenous communities. In a more general perspective on the phenomenon of mise en scéne, we sought to establish a conceptualization that could take into account the historicity of this category and a broader perspective in order to involve significant aspects of audiovisual making, such as predictability and unpredictability, dialogue with subjects present in the scene, the registration and the domain of space as significant elements for the documentary construction process. Initially, we point out the main theoretical references for this project positions concerning the fields of film anthropology, cinematographic studies and Documentary Theory. As a main conclusion for this research, we present that the political aspect of indigenous representative protagonism would be present in the mise en scène through the constitution of a scene in close relationship with the cultural and social characteristics of the indigenous, having in space an important point of articulation of the devices based both on the technique of documentary production and on the material and immaterial, encompassing, in turn, a set of devices whose function is to dispose of the subjects involved in what we call the space of the scene, and which is established, notably in the analyzed documentaries, by traditional, political and identity aspects common to the Mbya-Guarani culture.