Production and exhibition cinema: the ubiquity of the expanded documentary

Abstract

This article investigates the documentary experience as an instance of producing sensitive knowledge and reorganizing the relationships between aesthetics, politics, and reception. Based on the analysis of the documentaries Sensação Kite (BORTOLINI, Brasil, 2021) and Guardiões do Manguezal (BORTOLINI, Brasil, 2024), it examines how contemporary exhibition — characterized by the ubiquity of images and the multiplicity of platforms — transforms the spectator into an active agent in the construction of meaning. Grounded in the concepts developed by Jacques Rancière, particularly in The Ignorant Schoolmaster (1991), The Emancipated Spectator (2009), The Politics of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the Sensible (2004), and The Aesthetic Unconscious (2009), the research proposes that expanded documentary operates as a practice of redistribution of the sensible, allowing for the emergence of silenced voices and the active repositioning of the audience. The investigation, which articulates theoretical foundation and empirical procedure, argues that the political power of documentary lies not only in what it shows, but above all in how it reorganizes the regime of visibility and the sharing of narratives. It thus promotes a form of knowledge constructed in the encounter between those who film, those who watch, and the world they both inhabit.