Kátia - a documentary on affects, politics and history

Abstract

This article has in its basis a documentary named Kátia (2012), directed by Karla Holanda, that followed for twenty days the first transvestite in a public position in Brazil. The scenery of Piauí interior invite us to reflect on recent Brazilian history, but also on the production of documental material to be seen under aesthetics and political perspectives, taking in  consideration the mobilization of affects and social transformation. Kátia makes clear the irruption of non conventional characters, both in cinema and in the public Brazilian scene, in a gradual conquest of space and voice for these subjects. Therefore, we realize the possibility of a queering approach to the film, which take us to other questions: the abjection that becomes power, with the prominence, the activism, and the affective relations of a transvestite which entered a political scenery in the heart of Brazilian Northeast. One question to be remarked in this text is how the experience of affects is treated in Kátia’s filmic narrative.