Contrabando - um filme costeiro compreensões em torno do (dis)curso do Rio Uruguai

Contrabando - um filme costeiro: understandings around the (dis)course of the Uruguay River

Abstract

This paper is about the analysis of the meanings around the Uruguay River in the screenplay of the film Contraband - a coastal film, produced in cities of the state of Rio Grande do Sul (RS) and directed by filmmaker João Pedro Gottardo. This feature film problematizes the lives of riverside residents and focuses on the lives of chibeiros and their families, who trade goods from Argentina to sell in Brazil without going through import controls and tax collection. The chibeiros, as they are popularly known, cross the river in small boats to search for products in the neighboring country. In the film, the river occupies an important place in the construction of the narrative. In order to understand the ideological views about the river, we take the word as an ideological sign as the unit of study. For this purpose, we mobilized the theoretical-methodological perspective formulated by Bakhtin's circle and related it to Lakoff & Jonhnson's approach to metaphors. The final reflections refer to personification as an evaluative position anchored in ambivalence, pointing to the river as a figure that knows the power of life and death, capable on the one hand of giving life, welcoming it and narrating it in its mysteries, and on the other hand of taking it away, devouring it through its destructive power. It is a way to give meaning and structure to this element of nature that is present in the lives of the chibeiros and their families on a daily basis.