Os usos de testemunhos no documentário Flores do cárcere: narrativas de ex-presidiárias entre o tempo do cárcere e o tempo de liberdade

Abstract

This research proposes to analyze the documentary Flores do Cárcere (2019), which was produced by Bárbara Cunha and Paulo Caldas. The film deals with the memories of a group of former female prisoners of the Women's Public Prison of Santos in São Paulo State, Brazil. Firstly, six women return to the old prison place to recover their memories and share with the camera their experiences while incarcerated – one of them, an actress. After finishing this part, the feature film discusses issues related to current life in freedom, the challenges of resocialization and dreams for the future. However, it is not the first time that the protagonists have testified about prison. While serving their sentences, in 2005, they met and lived with Flavia Ribeiro de Castro, a volunteer teacher who worked for a period in prison and developed a series of social activities. Motivated by the exchanges she had with those women, she wrote a book in 2011 to register the experience and share the stories she heard. In the book, access to the experiences of former female prisoners is through Castro's narrative voice. In the film, on the other hand, those responsible for presenting the stories are the women themselves. Between the publication of the book and the release of the film there is a gap of 12 years, which is the point that arouses the attention to the research. The present time and the remembered time are approached in different ways. A cyclical movement can be seen: while prisoners, women remember the time of freedom and while free, they remember the time in prison. Such differences in movements were defined as analytical categories, providing guidance for observing how the film dealt with testimonies in its production conditions. Given this context, the general objective is to understand how the documentary makes use of the testimonies of former female prisoners, articulating the time in prison and the time of freedom. To support the journey, we sought to organize a theoretical basis based on the rapprochement between authors Aleida Assmann (2011), Paul Ricoeur (2007), Jeanne Marie Gagnebin (2006), Márcio Seligmann-Silva (2003 and 2010), Bethania Mariani (2016 and 2021) and Augusto SarmentoPantoja (2016 and 2019) to guide conceptions about memory, remembrance and testimony. For the methodological application, we went with the principles of Film Analysis. As a result, the way in which the documentary worked at each time is highlighted and, consequently, how this was reflected in the remembrance exercise carried out by the women and the expression of their memories and identities in the film.