Abc da greve: the camera, the people, the politics

Abstract

This paper investigates the movie Abc da greve, directed by Leon Hirszman, concerning the relationships between popular phenomena and its media representations. One moviemaker on the streets, with his camera, in the middle of a historical event process: what does he film? How does he reconstruct an event in which he is also immersed? Thus, this study discusses the ways the dialectical relationship among the individual, the mass, and one leader are represented in the movie. It also analyses, in regard of the documentary film, the uses of a materialist method of examining reality and yet the dialectical technique of film editing. This text also considers the machinic possibilities that sets apart cinema and television for its language elements: the technique enabled the documentarian to put his method in favor of a political argument and a dialectical synthesis of the industrial strike.