Lights, camera, co-creation: documentary cinema as an inspiration to decolonize knowledge production

Abstract

The article discusses the role of documentary cinema as inspiration for the development of sensitive  collaborative methodologies in interdisciplinary fields, such as collective health, involving the approximation  between scientists, filmmakers, and social movements  around health and environmental problems. The  article is anchored on the notion of making common  used by Paulo Freire and in the work of Boaventura de Sousa Santos, called Epistemologies of the South, and his proposal to decolonize knowledge, which  includes the realization of ecology of knowledges.  From such references, the documentary is reflected  beyond an artistic and authorial work based on  science, but as an emergence of new epistemes and  knowledge connected to social struggles and  emancipatory processes that can inspire  theoretical-methodological renewal in the production of  knowledges. In the article, we selected two  documentaries that address the struggles against  capitalist agriculture and the effects of the intensive  use of pesticides, as well as the promotion of  agroecology and agrarian reform as alternatives for  fairer, healthier, and more sustainable societies. As a  result, the analysis of those documentaries  demonstrates the potential of bringing together  science, politics, art, and ethics as interdisciplinary and intercultural practices of co-labor-action, co-production, and co-creation.