"Central Station"

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Central Station The film Central Station (1998) is about second chances, and starting over. Dora, a retired schoolteacher, writes letters for illiterate strangers in a bus station, Central do Brasil, in Rio. When one of her clients, a mother, is killed in an accident outside, Dora takes it upon herself to watch after the little boy, Josué. She decides to take him to see his father, who leaves very far away, by way of bus, truck and strangers. The journey becomes a quest for their own identities: one boy's search for his father; and one woman's search for her heart. The story takes place in a very poor area of Brazil, with graffiti on all the walls, and crime happening all over. One man gets chased down and shot for shoplifting. I believe that Central Station is an accurate depiction of Brazil at the time, with its political troubles and economic chaos. The movie is also an example of a Third Cinema film. The term "third cinema" is referred to as a film that gives an accurate representation of third world countries and people. It has also been defined as a type of political film grounded in the experiences of the Third World. The term was used in a manifesto towards a third cinema, written by Latin American filmmakers Fernando Solanas and Octavio Gettino. Aside from Central Station, another example of a Third Cinema is the film Romero (1989) in which an archbishop is portrayed as a prophet who speaks on behalf of the voiceless oppressed. Another term associated with this film is ideology. Ideology is usually defined as a "body of ideas reflecting the social needs and aspirations of an individual, group, class, or culture." Ideology is split up into three types: neutral, implicit, and explicit. In a neutral film, the emphasis is on action, pleasure, and entertainment values for their own sake. Issues of right and wrong are treated superficially, with little or no analysis. In an implicit film the protagonists and antagonists represent conflicting value systems, but those are not dwelled on. We must infer what the characters stand for as their tale unfolds. Nobody spells out "the moral of the story." Finally, in explicit films, movies are aimed to teach or persuade as much as to entertain. Patriotic films, many documentaries, political films and movies with a sociological emphasis fall under this category. One example would be Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004).

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