Horror e humor nas favelas cariocas: : o debate sobre violência urbana no Rio de Janeiro em dois curtas metragens de 1994

This paper discusses the narrative strategies in two short films about violence in Rio de Janeiro’s slums, made in Brazil in 1994. The first film is Túnel, directed by Bruno Kennedy and Mayra Jucá, which provides a nonsensical critique of how violence is exploited as an element of television consumption. The second is Geraldo Voador, by Bruno Vianna, which depicts the stolen childhood of a black boy living in a slum. In both films, the trivialization of violence, firearms and easy deaths ironizes the necropower that designates slums as “zones” where the free right to murder is consecrated. Furthermore, each film, in its own way, problematizes the media spectacularization of this violence, transforming it into a character, and strains the filmic language through a mix of horror and humor elements.