Elementos constitutivos do documentário Elena, de Petra Costa

Abstract

This dissertation is aimed at analysing the documentary film Elena, by Petra Costa, as to its visual and sonorous element narrative organization. It is a film that exposes the film-maker's relationship with the fact that her older sister - Elena - committed suicide in the early 1990s. Pain and resilience run through the narrative in a very particular, poetic and confessional way. In the course of this essay, the understanding of what is a documentary film in its most varied facets are discussed, dealing especially with its poetic and performative documentary side due to the characteristics of the purpose of the study. The ethics and dilemmas of the representation of reality in the film also contribute to the fundamental theoretical grounds for this research. From a detailed plan-to-plan division of the documentary, three main themes were chosen to guide the analysis: the section describing Elena's suicide; the confusion regarding the image of Elena and Petra; and the sharing of the film-maker's mourning due to her sister's death.