Brasília, cinema e modernidade: percorrendo a cidade modernista

Brasilia, inaugurated in 1960, expresses the modernist ideals of the Charter of Athens in the compartmentalization of its urban design and the liberation of its urban ground for the free transit of vehicles and pedestrians. Brasília represented the yearning for modernity in the country, attracting migrants from all regions, and became a focal point of urban development in the interior of Brazil. The principles of urban design that give the capital its peculiar flows and movements did not go unnoticed to cinematographic lenses. Movies about Brasilia often portray the routes followed by cars in the city. From the perspective of the moving car, Brasilia seems to embody the speed of the car in our experience of the city, and the reading of the landscape that occurs at speed creates a strong identification with the motion picture film. Documented by filmmakers since its construction, Brasilia has shown its transformation in movies that witness the destruction of the modernist programmatic narrative, thus multiplied in narratives of transitional character which value the experiences of individual or small social groups. The narrative created by the movies about Brasilia that bring up the representation of the city’s space begs the question: would it be possible for us to acknowledge that space, appropriated not as permanence but as fluidity, and participate in the construction of a collective imagination that relates to routes within the city, creating different experiences of place? By putting together the cinematographic universe of Brasilia and circulation, we can see the city through the paths that are frequently trodden and are part of a creation in time. This study follows modernity, the city, and cinema, which will be the foundations for an analysis of the representations of Brasilia.