Contra os tigres de papel: juventude, cinema e resistência ao regime militar em Goiás no filme "A Fraude" (1968)

Abstract

In 1968, a group composed mainly of young students filmed the short movie A Fraude in Goiânia to compete in the IV Amateur Film Festival organized by Jornal do Brasil, an important platform for showcasing films in the second half of the 1960s. Directed by Jocelan Melquíades de Jesus, the film portrays Luiz, a student who became an excedente – those who achieved a sufficient score in the university entrance exam but was not admitted due to a lack of available spots – during the admissions process for the Faculty of Medicine at the Federal University of Goiás (UFG) in 1968. During the military dictatorship, resistance through cultural action was also reflected in the activities of intellectuals and artists in Goiás. This study analyzes the production process of A Fraude and employs film analysis to understand how youth appropriated cinema as a form of resistance against the Brazilian military dictatorship. That year, prospective students took to the streets of the state capital, Goiânia, alleging that the UFG administration itself had perpetrated fraud in the admissions process. Through the film's imagery, the creators captured the specificities of the conflicts between the military regime, universities, and students in Goiás, addressing the theme of underdevelopment and denouncing the government’s subservience to U.S. imperialism, as expressed through the MEC-Usaid agreements. In alignment with the aesthetic and narrative tendencies of Brazilian modern cinema, a group of students filmed reality to confront it, constructing a perspective on Goiânia, the student revolt, and the military dictatorship through the use of allegory, with a tone that oscillates between didacticism and exasperation.