Processos criativos e representações na produção audiovisual amazonense: um olhar folkcomunicacional sobre a “Associação Cinematográfica Fogo Consumidor Filmes”, de Tefé/AM

Abstract

This thesis proposes an interpretation about socio-cultural and aesthetic aspects of contemporary audiovisual production in the state of Amazonas, from the theoretical perspective of Folkcommunication. It investigates creative processes and representations of the Amazon and its populations, based on the analysis of photographic records posted on the internet and films made by the Associação Fogo Consumidor Filmes (ACFCF), located in the city of Tefé (AM). It is an amateur film production company, which has no financial resources, with poor infrastructure, formed by young people from the city. Since 2012, the group has been dedicated to making films in fiction and documentary, including feature films, with the aim of rescuing traditions and valuing the Amazonian cultural identity. The qualitative study is based on theoretical contributions from communication, art, cinema and audiovisual, in an interdisciplinary dialogue with authors from anthropology, sociology and environmental sciences, following a post-colonial epistemological approach. The methodological strategy combines bibliographic research, netnography, imagery and film analysis. It is clear that, even reproducing references from the dominant media culture, the ACFCF films and posts reveal a kind of cultural resistance, by subverting the logic of commercial or art cinema, whether in creative strategies to overcome economic and infrastructure limitations or incorporate local / regional socio-cultural issues, from the place of speech of the Amazonians and a peculiar aesthetic. In this sense, the narratives expressed in photographic posts and in cinematographic productions, as well as the creative processes involved, can be understood as an artistic-communicational-educational system insurgent to the historically constructed absences, through representations of prejudiced imagery in relation to the Amazon and their populations, still broadcast in the traditional media. In addition, the ACFCF tells us that the community character of making cinema, the facilities of production in digital systems and the dissemination over the internet allow the propagation a type of popular cinema production and alternative to hegemonic media, which we call cine-folk. Therefore, in their creative processes and self-representations, they overcome the idea of subordination. They are not on the margins, but at the center of another socio-cultural, aesthetic and communicational context of audiovisual production.