Images of democracy: educational cinema and the masses in the first half of the twentieth century in Brazil and Europe

Abstract

This research has as its object of study the educational cinema produced between World War I and the end of World War II, in three different national spaces: Brazil, Great Britain and France. The objective is to map and analyze films, texts and singular personalities linked to cinematic projects with educational purposes directed to the "masses", made in these places in the first half of the twentieth century. With this study we intend to understand the possible meanings of education, culture and democracy that were moving in these societies, with the objective of contributing to the field of education and society studies from the perspective of the Sociology of Art and Cinema and Cultural History. Conducting an empirical study, which may bring new problematizations about the relationship between cinema and society in Brazil and Europe, also composes the universe of interests of this investigation. (AU)