Files
Abstract
This dissertation investigates how the cinema of Kleber Mendonça Filho reflects and responds to the neoliberal reconfiguration affecting the Global South, with a particular focus on Pernambuco, Brazil. The study positions Mendonça Filho’s films as both products of and critiques against the forces of capital, exploring how his works engage with local and global audiences through reflexive strategies. While international viewers can grasp the universal themes of resistance and urban conflict, local audiences perceive specific cultural signs—whether intentional or not—that resonate with their lived experiences. The research draws on theories of cinematic enunciation and reflexivity to demonstrate how Mendonça Filho’s films establish a unique dialogue with their spectators. It argues that his works are not merely transparent narratives but rather invite local viewers into a differentiated mode of interaction, enriching the understanding of the relationship between audience and cinema. The analysis further highlights how the director, by revisiting local memory and culture, situates himself within an idealized sense of pernambucanidade (Pernambuco identity). Because pernambucanidade is a concept shaped by a conservative thinker like Gilberto Freyre, it creates a critical tension in the analysis of Mendonça Filho’s otherwise progressive films. The central hypothesis is that Kleber Mendonça Filho’s cinema, while operating simultaneously as both a product and a critique of neoliberalism, not only revisits and questions pernambucanidade but also shares, in certain aspects, common ground with Freyre’s cultural vision, generating a productive tension between tradition and progressive critique. The dissertation culminates in an analysis of the films Neighboring Sounds, Aquarius, and Bacurau, followed by an epilogue on Pictures of Ghosts, which marks a shift in tone in Mendonça Filho’s body of work and symbolizes cultural resistance through the last bastion of memory, the São Luiz Cinema, in downtown Recife. This study contributes to expanding our understanding of how regional cinema can serve as a vehicle for social critique and cultural preservation in the context of globalization and neoliberal encroachment.