Cinema Brasiliano: o pensamento eugênico de Edgard Roquette-Pinto através dos filmes de Humberto Mauro

Abstract

The research for master's thesis has as main objective the analysis of two films directed by Humberto Mauro and oriented by Edgard Roquette-Pinto: O Descobrimento do Brasil (1937) and Argila (1942). Considering the consolidation of eugenics in the early twentieth century as a science and a political and social movement, and thinking Roquette-Pinto as one of the great exponents of this field in Brazil, the the films’ interpretation I realize aims the identification and reflection on representations of the construction of an eugenic Brazil in the works. To reach this goal I start from a reading of the feature films both by the images and by the dialogues established with their own context. Then, I follow the trajectories of its producers, the Brazilian cinematography of that time and, mainly, the relationship between the discourses on eugenics and the projects of the nation debated between the 1920s and 1940s. In this way, it is possible to analyze, from the eugenic perspective, what kind of Brazil was built by the cinema-making in these decades and, highlighting the importance of the intellectual orientations of Roquette-Pinto, to understand as Humberto Mauro's films were positioned ideologically in this political context.