Cinema and social sciences: Between the dead times and the critical thought images

To revisit sequence of images from some essay-films connecting justice, violence and construction of memory, allows - in its critical and reflexive effects –, the comprehension of some aporetical dimensions around the “social question” and its representational forms in Brazilian cinema nowadays. Justice, from Maria Agusta Ramos, and Prisioner of Iron Bars, from Paulo Sacramento, both iserted as non-fictional films, were exhibited in 2004. Awarded in many national and international festivals, they raised a strong public debate about social inequalities, violence and (in)justices. A comparison with a recent fiction film – The Tenants, from Sergio Bianchi, 2009, is suggestive to emphasize analysis of two important dimensions for social sciences, relating aesthetics and politics. 1) The theme of naturalization of daily violence (and its symbolic dimension), inside a process of normalization of barbarism, with emphasis on the spectacularization of violence constructed by television media, between others. 2) The theme that connects image-in-movement, movement of history and memory, and its critical configurations, as an important counterpoint in relation to a cinematographic prodution in recent times, through a “cordial cinema” – and its dead times –, ruled by a dualistic vision of social problems, erasing the perspective of “dialectical image”, core of reflections of Walter Benjamin.