The production of documentaries and the dispute for truth

An analysis of “Brasil Paralelo”

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the memory conveyed through the documentaries produced by Brasil Paralelo, based on the reconfiguration of fundamentalism and Traditionalism in relation to the religious discursive order. Using an integrative model linked to the methodological pluralism enabled by contemporary religious studies, we adopt Michel Foucault’s concept of knowledge-power as the main theoretical foundation. Employing his discourse analysis, including concepts such as the domain of memory and the field of concomitance, we investigate how the cinematographic space of documentaries is used in disputes involving statements related to science and religion. In this context, we examine how non-fiction films, usually considered as strata of the historical world, express a creative treatment of reality in their representations, resonating with a conception of truth tied to the discourse statements that the audiovisual production seeks to echo. Analyzing two documentaries by Brasil Paralelo, Pátria Educadora and O Fim da Beleza, we find that the affective-emotional effects materialized in the films’ construction, along with representations of a religious memory that traverses political and scientific fields and is reconfigured through the intersection of fundamentalism and Traditionalism, reinforce a shift in the order of this discourse over the past decades. This shift suggests that a specific religious truth must permeate other discursive spheres through a field of concomitance, facilitating the subversion of scientific statements and, consequently, seeking to reconfigure the memory of an idealized past in the present.