In the 1920s and 1930s, educators associated to the Escola Nova movement drew up a set of educational proposals to implement educational cinema in Brazil. Quite aware of the social problems of its time, this group elected education as the possibility to transform Brazilian society. Documentary cinema, among other pedagogical resources and audiovisual techniques, was idealized as the solution to the crisis. Based on the French and U.S. experience, those educators discussed the contributions of documentary cinema to education. This paper discusses the conceptions designed by the members of the Escola Nova movement as for the link between documentary cinema and education.
Educational cinema; Documentary cinema; Escola Nova; Brazilian cinema; Education