With how many films can we talk about children? Childhood representational plurality in cinema

Abstract

This article presents part of the descriptive data about a doctoral study held between 2017 and 2021. The study problematized the formative, pedagogical, and aesthetic experience with films in an undergraduate Pedagogy degree. By highlighting children’s representational plurality through films, from a filmography review or film state of the art, this text aims to reflect on the significant amount of short, middle, and feature films that portray children in their different narratives. Regarding the methods used, we privileged the work in an interdisciplinary and multi-referential methodological conjunction based on Grounded Theory and scientific bricolage, backed by hermeneutic phenomenology. We point out 204 cinematographic works - from data on theses, dissertations, and scientific articles – from searches in theses and dissertations databases in digital libraries and journal platforms. The professors interviewed accounted for thirty productions. Faced with this number of works, we believe that films are part of students’ formative process and allow other interpretations of children and childhoods nowadays, revealing their relevance as a source and reference in the formative process.