Deficiência em cena: representação, legitimação e interseccionalidade no Festival Assim Vivemos

Abstract

Debates on people with disabilities have expanded, increasingly highlighting them as protagonists. Given the growing complexity of this topic, spaces for analysis and dialogue have emerged, including film festivals focused on disability. In this context, this research addresses the ways in which people with disabilities are represented in cinema in relation to social markers of difference, such as gender, race, sexuality, and age/generation. The general objective was to analyze how the synopses of works awarded at Assim Vivemos: Festival Internacional de Filmes sobre Deficiência construct representations and meanings of disability, considering their intersectional articulation with gender, race/ethnicity, sexuality, and age/generation. The specific objectives were: (a) to understand how social markers of difference—gender, race, sexuality, and age/generation—intersect with disability in the construction of representations of people with disabilities in the synopses of award-winning works at the Festival; (b) to identify recurring patterns, ruptures, and singularities in the synopses of the award-winning films; and (c) to analyze how the Festival’s website and Instagram account discursively construct meanings of disability, accessibility, and inclusion. The study adopts a qualitative approach with an exploratory and descriptive design and is grounded in documentary research. Data were collected from the official Assim Vivemos website and Instagram account. The research corpus consisted of materials published on these platforms and the synopses of awardwinning films. To analyze the synopses, an analytical framework comprising guiding questions was developed to explore representations of disability, particularly regarding their intersectional articulation with the other social markers of difference examined in the study. The data were analyzed using content analysis. The results indicate recurring narrative patterns and themes in the representation of disability in award-winning films, frequently associated with frameworks that oscillate between the reproduction of stigma and the emergence of more complex and plural perspectives. At the same time, ruptures and singularities were identified that challenge traditional models of representation, pointing to shifts in the struggles over meaning surrounding disability in cinema. The study concludes that an intersectional analysis of cinematic representations of disability contributes to understanding the struggles over meaning that shape the legitimation of disability, highlighting the importance of audiovisual productions that broaden the plurality of experiences and subjectivities of people with disabilities.