CINEMA AGAINST THE STATE: FOR A POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF IMAGES (ONCE UPON A TIME IN BRASÍLIA, BY ADIRLEY QUEIRÓS)

Abstract

Starting from Queirós’ proposition of a “Cinema against the State,” which finds echoes in the political philosophy of Pierre Clastres (2003), I analyze the political-aesthetic implications of this proposition. I intend to explore the meanings of Era uma Vez Brasília by properly analyzing the imagetic plane presented in the films and the discussions, criticisms, and statements of director Adirley Queirós. In the first part, “The play of Mourning: Its Allegories,” I emphasize the allegorical nature of images that evoke landscape-feelings such as ruins, melancholy, screaming skulls, and skepticism, which reframe the State by pointing to its drifts. In the second part, “The Haunting Specter,” I explore the idea of a combat film, a struggle in which the malaise of Brazilian civilization becomes image. This malaise is instigated by political impulses directed to combat the specter of ‘communism,’ which, erected as a ghost, magnifies the State in its unity dimension in the fight against a common enemy. In the conclusion, “Prisoners of Our Own Illusions,” Queirós’ idea is revisited through Umberto Eco’s assertion that humanity’s greatest ability is to create ghosts, producing the feeling that we are prisoners of our own illusions-imprisoning images that allegorize in the film the very meaning of the State.

Keywords:
Cinema; Brasília; Image; Clastres; Visual anthropology