Youth and documentary practices in São Paulo: cultural activism and visibility policies

Abstract

The centrality of images in contemporary times and the power relations around them, the image as cognitive mediation and the expansion and democratization of its forms of production impact the construction of audiovisual material, including the documentary. There is a growing universe of independent practices for making documentaries, forged by different production and dissemination processes, by the use of digital technologies and by specific relationships with politics, social struggles and engagements. Youth collectives in the city of São Paulo, linked to peripheral and subalternized contexts, appropriate audiovisual culture and documentary as strategies for visibility, resistance and re-existence. The methodology and theoretical framework of the article are constitute by everyday observations, in-depth interviews and analyzes from Cultural Studies – and their Latin American reverberations, as well as references from the fields of Communication and Anthropology, with a focus on youth.