Fictional biopic films and the representation of the Vargas Era in contemporaneity

Abstract

Our goal is to identify the aesthetic and narrative recurrences of the period known as Vargas Era, in a group of Brazilian films that we recognize as fictional biopic films. We propose to understand in which social and affectional circumstances the films emerge, in order to give new meanings to the traumatic experience of the Vargas’s dictatorship. The discussion is carried out especially by means of Rancière (2012; 2013) and Kracauer (2001), because these authors allow us to have a critical reading of the social aspects through the affections and materiality of the filmic images. In contemporary times, there are dissonances about how Brazilian cinema had been dealing with the theme of the Vargas Era. Thereby, we have noticed affectional updates implicated to the trabalhismo in the Brazilian political scenario, in films that privilege intimate aspects of the characters by means of the fictional and the everyday life.