POSTGRADUATE PROGRAM
The creation of the Postgraduate Program in Audiovisual Media and Processes is the result of a legacy of historical and aesthetic research developed over the last three decades by professors and researchers dedicated to film, radio and television studies at ECA USP. The master’s program in radio and television was the first to be created, in 1972, followed in 1974 by the master's in film and theater. In 1980, doctorate programs were created in both fields of study. Reformulations of the program implemented in 1996 consolidated the two courses into a single concentration area of the postgraduate program in Communication Sciences, successfully establishing the area of Communication and Audiovisual Aesthetics, which later was renamed as the Media Studies and Media Production program.
In 2009, professors working in teaching and research related to cinema, television, radio, video and digital media proposed the constitution of this new program, which brings together artistic and industrial, theoretical and practical aspects of the audiovisual area.
The strategic character, in the contemporary world, of the production and circulation of films, videos, television programs, sound media and digital content, stimulates theoretical creation and reflection, criticism and historical research, renewing conceptual and methodological instruments, and configuring a specific area of knowledge. The program's faculty brings together some of the most renowned researchers in the area, specialists trained in aesthetics, literature, history, social sciences, architecture, economics, as well as cinema, video, sound and digital media, and who work around thematic and audiovisual works.
Thereby, gathering researchers from different theoretical perspectives, that share the understanding that the formal articulations that individualize audiovisual works constitute the core of their investigation. Therefore, the program was structured around various audiovisual manifestations, with the understanding that based on these specificities, it is possible to investigate cultural and historical injunctions that relate to other areas of knowledge.
The program consolidates and expands a research tradition initiated by Paulo Emilio Salles Gomes, continuing the work of professors Jean-Claude Bernardet, Maria Rita Galvão and Ismail Xavier, authors who, in different ways, centered their approaches on the empirical specificities of filmic objects. Furthermore, it continues the research traditions in the field of television and electronic/digital media, semiotics and reception studies, respectively inaugurated among us by Arlindo Machado, Eduardo Peñuela Cañizal and Mauro Wilton de Sousa. The program also meets the movement of researchers in the area who, since 1997, meet annually in a specific association, the Brazilian Society for Film and Audiovisual Studies (SOCINE), which promotes national intellectual exchange between professors and postgraduate students, allocated in their universities of origin, in departments of different matrices (Communications, Arts, Languages and Human Sciences).
The project also extends to the postgraduate course at ECA the success of the reformulation of the undergraduate program, with the creation of the Audiovisual Higher Education Course in 2000. With the objective of expanding studies at the master's and doctoral levels to contemporary areas of cinema, video, radio, television and digital media, the new course has achieved successful results verified by the quality of the production of new students in comparison to the legacy courses in Film and Video, Radio and Television. The program aims to provide the necessary theoretical, technical and critical instruments, in order to prepare professionals and researchers to face the challenges in a world in which the various formats and vehicles for conveying sounds and images converge to digital support and are present in entertainment, academic and artistic fields, with economic and political implications.
This new way of looking at the field generated a renewed impetus, influencing graduate studies and configuring a potential for research and achievement stimulated by the new program.
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