The dialectic dimension of cinema and its contribution to human education

Abstract

This article aims to discuss the relationship between cinema in capitalist society and aims to highlight its dialectical dimension and its educational role in the formation of the subjectivity of individuals as a cultural manifestation. Although it is strongly linked to the reproduction of the dominant ideology, serving the maintenance of the current system, it is important to highlight its contradictory character, resulting from the human labor act. In this sense, the cinema brings within itself an emancipatory dimension, focused on the formation of a critical conscience in relation to reality. At first, we establish a dialogue with the authors of “Critical Theory”, Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, who emphasize the alienating dimension of culture in mass society. Next, we present a discussion on aspects of “Cinema Novo” in Brazil, which inaugurated the commitment of cinema to social and political transformation, seeking to show a reality that needed to be modified with the prominent use of elements of Marxist thought. Taking historical-dialectical materialism as a theoretical-methodological reference, we seek to apprehend its dialectical movement and its historical-social particularities, constituted in the midst of class relations between capital and labor.