Cinedemography

Brazilian films and migratory flows in the 21st century

Resumen

Cinema was consolidated as an object of academic study from the 1970s onwards, when some areas of knowledge have also began to use films as a research method. This article proposes the development of Cinedemography, a combination of demographic methods and film analysis, to understand the migratory phenomenon. For this purpose, we analyze the characters profiles and migratory flows represented in selected Brazilian movies, released between 2001 and 2020, comparing cinematographic representations with migratory flows collected by the 2000 and 2010 Demographic Censuses. Furthermore, we highlight recent films, which suggest new flows, which should be subject to analysis based on data from the 2022 Demographic Census. The results indicate that the films corroborate and complement data from the Demographic Censuses, bringing the themes addressed by cinema closer to the public, and can also be used as an alternative source of data in the absence of oficial statistics.