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History and Space; Kleber Mendonça Filho; Brazilian Cinema; Building Films.
This research investigates the relationships between space, cinema, and memory in the films of Kleber Mendonça Filho between 1997 and 2016. The central problem mobilizing the study consists of analyzing the historical determinants of how urban spaces were appropriated in the Brazilian cinema of the Pernambuco-born director, especially in the films Caged In (1997), Cold Tropics (2009), and Aquarius (2016). The investigation works with the cinematographic forms produced from the process of verticalization in the city of Recife/PE, given that the transformation of the urban space in Recife involved urban verticalization over the course of the last decades covered by the selected films. The study contextualized Mendonça Filho's work within recent national film production in general, and that of Pernambuco in particular, as well as recent urban changes in contemporary Brazil, specifically gentrification and verticalization. The theoretical framework articulated concepts from the perspective of cultural geography and urbanism to understand gentrification processes in the Global South, with a special focus on the city of Recife; the notion of cinematographic operation; and the proposals of decolonial studies. The cultural dynamic that emerges, therefore, highlights a local/global cultural logic, a city appropriated by cinema through the manner in which global processes of urbanization (gentrification and verticalization) are realized as local realities. The films, in this case, serve as records of urban experiences, practices, and significations of a city in the Global South.