“Cavação” and domestic cinema: ruptures and continuities in family pictures

Abstract

Ever since the beginning of film history, records of family images are displayed on movie screens. In Brazil, the bourgeois family has held a prominent position in the world of the cinematographic representation back to the early years of the twentieth century, when the “cavadores” filmmakers dedicated themselves to register in film a number of rituals and celebrations of Brazil’s upper class. However, it was after the 1920’s, with the development of new technologies aimed directly to amateur productions, that scenes from the domestic and private life began to be registered by the family clan. In this article, we propose to investigate the possible relations and the different representations of families resulting from the “cavação” in the 1910’s and from the domestic cinema between the 1920’s and the 1930’s.