A feminine image of the city from Rio de Janeiro’s urban periphery: audiovisual practices, representations and imaginaries

This thesis contends that moving images have an important role in the articulation of society and space, revealing it and shaping it through a connection between the real and the imaginary. Focusing on contemporary production by women from the peripheral region of the Baixada Fluminense, I explore aspects of the relationship between audiovisual practices and representations and the socio-spatial construction of gender in the city, arguing that they embody and make visible an intersectional feminine image of the city. At a moment of greater access to the production of audio-visual media, the thesis examines ways in which the creation and screening of audiovisual productions in the city become vehicles for seeing differently, for reflecting on socio-spatial structures through time, and for inventing new possibilities and / or imaginaries. Moving from fieldwork to a theoretical frame that brings together audiovisual studies and urban studies, with a focus on gender and race in Brazil, the written thesis is complemented by practice-based work, driven by the idea of thinking through, and with, images and sounds. The location of this study in Rio de Janeiro – the iconic urban image of Brazil and the birthplace of Brazilian cinema – not only facilitates the emplacement of such an enquiry within a historic continuum but poses broader and urgent questions about our capacity to imagine other forms of structuring and inhabiting, urban social worlds. Thesis is embargoed until 31 December 2028.