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 theoreticalmethodological 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.