The Brazilian film This Love that Consumes Us, directed by Allan Ribeiro (2012), portrays an Afro-Brazilian dance company and its struggle for sustainable artistic creation. The group is striving to secure the house where they live and rehearse in Rio de Janeiro. In my presentation, I analyze how this film creates different ways of representing subjects when it comes to race, gender, sexuality, and the right to the city. My theoretical framework includes history of education, cinema, and gender studies. In The White Architects of Black Education, William Watkins points out that dominant powers subtly impart their ideology as part of a natural order (1933: 9). The dissemination of culture that happens through media, and the teaching of history, philosophy, art, religion, etc., are powerful tools used to subjugate most citizens to a dominant ideology. This Love that Consumes Us, just like other independent films, breaks with racial, gender and sexual stereotypes that reinforce the idea of superiority of one group in relation to others. In my presentation, I will demonstrate how this film contributes to the empowerment of underrepresented populations such as queer communities, women and people of color.
