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Horizontes Antropológicos

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Abstract

MENEZES, Paulo. Major Reis and the visual constitution of Brazil as a nation.Translated byLetícia Maria Costa da Nóbrega Cesarino. Horiz.antropol. [online]. 2008, vol.4Selected edition, pp. 0-0. ISSN 0104-7183.

This article analyzes the movie Ao Redor do Brasil, by Thomaz Reis, taking as main theoretical references Paulo Arantes's, 'O sentido da formação' and Foucault's 'The Order of Discourse. It interprets the movie as a discourse immersed in debates of its time about the constitution of Brazil as a nation, a constant theme in everyday life and intellectual circles during the 1920's and 30's. In parallel to what was being discussed in literature and plastic arts, the movie is carefully assembled, using several scenes from Reis's previous movies to visually denote a Nation, not on its way towards consolidation, but with its hinterlands already pacified. This would lend it a label of civility, therefore inserting it in the civilizing process and, at the same time, showing definitive frontiers secured by the presence of institutions characteristic of the modern State: schools, police, army and others (an image very different from what could be effectively verified at that time).

Keywords : civilizing process; ethnographic movie; major Reis; nation.

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