Title:
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A jornada: uses of filmed narrative in migration between Brazil and Ireland
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The PhD with Practice ‘A Jornada: Uses of Filmed Narrative in Migration between
Brazil and Ireland’ is an audiovisual narrative inquiry consisting of a written thesis
and eight interlinking short digital video works. The timeframe is Ireland’s period of
economic buoyancy referred to as the “Celtic Tiger” (Kevin Gardiner 1994) when a
significant number of Brazilian nationals started to work in Irish meat factories. This
study examines the filmed narratives expressed by a community of Brazilian meat
workers in migration between Brazil and Ireland. It also includes the narrative of an
Irish missionary priest whose return to Ireland from Brazil interconnects with this
migratory movement, and my own as returned Irish emigrant. This inquiry seeks an
understanding of the narrative in migration rather than one of migration. Filmed
narratives are expressed conversationally and take the form of anecdote, narrative
fracture and visually expressed narrative. In this regard argument is made that no
narrative is too slight for critical examination. Questions are directed towards
examining themes that emerge from these filmed expressions. What visual glimpse or
narrative fracture reveals a further story beyond the narrative being filmed? How does
the filmmaking process influence this narrative expression? This inquiry’s
contribution to knowledge operates at two distinct, but interrelated levels. At one level
it offers a unique set of filmed narratives about migration to Ireland from the
perspective of Brazilian meat workers new to this experience and to this country. Such
narratives of arrival offer a view ‘from without’ of Ireland as emergent host country.
Arguably voices like these are rarely heard, or attended to, in discourse about Ireland,
a factor that informs their selection for critical examination by this study. At another
level narratives of return (the Irish missionary and myself) offer an evolving view of
host country Ireland ‘from within’. This inquiry’s narratives are mediated through a
series of short practice films available online that participate in a transnational cinema
concerned with those whose lives are “caught in the cracks of globalization”
(Elizabeth Ezra and Terry Rowden 2006: 7). By situating these assembled perspectives
in this audiovisual narrative inquiry, a multifaceted version of Ireland is critically
explored as it emerges from a period of accelerated economic growth into the 21st
century. This inquiry thus seeks to make significant contribution to new knowledge.
Case studies are examined through the filmed narratives of Brazilian meat workers
located in meat-producing areas of Ireland (that include Cork, Roscommon, Dublin,
Meath and Cavan), and a village in central Brazil (Vila Fabril, Anápolis, State of
Goiás). Case study contributors are: Luciano Santana Borges, Alfredo Costa Ramos,
Pat McNamara, Leandro André Tinôco and myself (Jo Neylin). The thesis is published
in written and audiovisual interrelated texts. These can be read and viewed separately,
but benefit from being read in close reference to each other. The written thesis falls
into three sections: the first part overviews a theoretical framework in which narrative
and filmmaking are discussed in relation to this study; the second part examines the
interlinking practice films as narrative case studies; in conclusion this inquiry’s
findings are reviewed and evaluated in the third section.
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