Corpo e Memória de José Leonilson

Abstract

In this paper, we intend to present some reflections in our study about the documentary Fuocoammare, directed by Gianfranco Rosi and winner of the Berlin’s Festival Golden Bear Award 2016, in order to identify, in this work, correspondences between geography and cinema. There are various aspects of geography, especially the issue of immigration and refugees landing on Lampedusa Island, the southern coast of Italy. This cinematographic work is also an excerpt from the life of the islanders, with all the characteristics – cultural, linguistic-dialectal, socioeconomic, geographical – that emerge and involve the plot and narrative that are built. The narrative nucleus is directly related to the relationship between the characters and the space where they find themselves, since the space is taken simultaneously as scenery and territory, concretely lived and occupied by people/characters. However, the premise that movies are representations of reality must be put into discussion. The challenge is to use films to develop a keen geographical look at the film work, as it is a cultural product that creates its own system of meanings and realities, not merely illustrations of geographical concepts. As will be discussed throughout the article, no film is a theoretical geographical make; geographical concepts are freely articulated by the directors. When putting into perspective the making of cinema as a human activity, it is necessary to highlight the inevitable presence of subjectivity nuances. Given the above, it is evident the potentiality of reflection that emerges from this study, with the purpose of contributing to the debate on the intersection between two areas of knowledge put in dialogue and also for the use of cinema as a resource in the teaching-learning process in the context of basic education through the didactization of this cultural product