Shifting Horizons: Urban Space and Social Difference in Contemporary Brazilian Documentary

Shifting Horizons is an interdisciplinary investigation of the treatment of social difference in documentary film and photography and its potential to effect social and political change. It explores the Brazilian documentary tradition of conscientização, or efforts to raise awareness of social problems through the production of media, and questions whether or not this model still has the capacity to drive social and political change today.

Drawing on the challenges of urban expansion and increasing population density facing contemporary Brazil and other countries around the world, Shifting Horizons discusses the representation of traditionally marginalized urban spaces in contemporary cultural production, exposing alternative viewpoints and paradigm shifts that dialogue with concepts of inequality, segregation, integration, and relationality. It bridges the domains of film and photography and introduces the voices of a range of innovative and highly contemporary artists, filmmakers, and cultural commentators. Bringing greater awareness to Brazilian cultural output, it also highlights new ways in which today’s social documentary practice and production can inspire social and cultural transformation, in Brazil and around the world.