From traces to imagery: film consumption in Belle Époque carioca

Abstract

This article intends to undertake a discussion of media consumption at the turn of the XIXth and XXth centuries from some sources contained by some journals stored in the National Library of Brazil. Because of the heterogeneity of these sources, we chose to focus the discussion on consumption to trace some possible paths in its analysis, with emphasis on a cultural history that encompasses the uses and representations that circulated through the cinematic practice. In the treatment of these sources, we chose the methodology of the evidential paradigm, as Carlo Ginzburg thought about it when dealing with heterogeneous sources, combining with this the analysis of Mary Douglas and Baron Isherwood on consumption in complex societies and Roger Chartier’s on cultural history. Finally, we place our questions from the discussions launched by Vicente de Paula Araújo and Jean Claude Bernardet on Brazilian cinema of the silent period.