Interactive notebook in five acts
Mosaic of testimonies
57 testimonies from the films of Vladimir Carvalho.
Research themes
A view through cinema
Films
Seven films by Vladimir Carvalho form the basis of this experience, organised along the three axes of the research. Tap a documentary to open its full record and meet its testimonies.
Resistant memories
Communities that preserved territory, culture and identity in the face of Brasília’s expansion and official narratives.
Memories of war
Testimonies about the construction of the capital and its violent impacts: evictions, precarious conditions and life in the work camps.
Interrupted memories
Lives and landscapes left behind by modernisation: people on the margins of progress and forgotten territories.
About the project
This website stems from the doctoral research “Diante da catástrofe: a modernização brasileira nos filmes de Vladimir Carvalho entre 1974 e 1991” [Facing Catastrophe: Brazilian Modernization in the Films of Vladimir Carvalho Between 1974 and 1991], by Aline Fernandes Carrijo, developed at the University of São Paulo under the supervision of Professor Maurício Cardoso. The platform was created in partnership with the C²DH (Centre for Contemporary and Digital History) at the University of Luxembourg.
Vladimir Carvalho’s cinema is the starting point: seven documentaries that record, through a poetic and political lens, the lives of workers, migrants, quilombolas, washerwomen, and artisans who built and inhabited the Central Plateau.
More than disseminating the doctoral thesis, this website is a public history project that seeks to forge closer ties with people and create a space for listening. By creating tension between the triumphant narrative of modernization and the power of popular testimonies, the research expands its own boundaries, enabling collective memory to return as living heritage to the territories of Central Brazil.