XVII Congress of the Brazilian Studies Association

Subjectivity, Representation, and Ocupações in São Paulo: A Comparative Analysis of Era o Hotel Cambridge (Eliane Caffé - 2016) and A ocupação (Julián Fuks 2019)

• In Event: Underrepresented voices in Brazilian Cinema: Presence, Tensions and Representations

Abstract

There has been increased academic and artistic production engaging with the occupy movements in São Paulo – organizations of homeless, immigrant, refugee, and ally activists that have occupied vacant properties in the center of the city since 1994 to enact the social right to housing guaranteed by the 1988 Brazilian constitution. Two recent works engage with the occupation movements through an approach that blends fiction, documentary, and critical consideration of subjectivity and representation of the occupiers: Eliane Caffé’s 2016 film Era o Hotel Cambridge and Julián Fuks’ 2019 novel, A ocupação. In dialogue with such authors as Jacques Rancière, Raquel Rolnik, and Vera Pallamin, in this paper I tease out the ways that both the film and novel explore the tensions between fiction and real-life experiences of the residents of the Cambridge and organizations such as the Movimento Sem-Teto do Centro and the Frente de Luta por Moradia—in order to make visible the complex relationship between politics and aesthetics in the portrayal of marginalized communities. Both works contain a self-critical component related to subjectivity and representation in their engagement with the occupiers, but do so in a way that recognizes the privileged position of the filmmaker/author while not preventing their work to appear as an act of solidarity with those actively staking a claim to their right to housing in São Paulo.

Author

• Andrew Rajca, University of South Carolina