Of Archons and Amateurs: Commissioned Filmmaking in Contemporary Brazilian Cinema

This chapter discusses three documentary films from Brazil as forms of commissioned filmmaking, where professional filmmakers engage untrained individuals to obtain locally produced images and sounds (from prison, streets and homes, respectively). As I argue, commissioned filmmaking offers a possibility for the makers to access social spheres that were otherwise out of their reach and that rarely have been explored before in documentary. Therefore, it not only potentially broadens the spectrum of what receives social attention in non-fiction film, but also opens up documentary discourse to different sources of knowledge and multiple points of view.