SILVA NETO, José Antônio da.
Résumé:
During the first decades of the twentieth century, the city of Cajazeiras-PB, as other cities
in the interior of Paraíba, experienced a modernization process that endowed its urban
space with new elements, which attested to the economic growth and material progress
that the city was achieving due to the development of trade and cotton crops. One of these
new elements was the cinema, a vehicle of communication and entertainment that soon
became a popular leisure among the inhabitants of Cajazeiras for about seven decades,
from the 1920s until the end of the activities of the last cinema in Cajazeiras, Cine Éden,
in 1990. In addition to the fun provided by the movie exhibitions, local cinemas acted as
promoters of interactions and sociability, and one of the incentives to attend a cinema
session was the opportunity to relate, to keep in touch with people that circulated in that
space. These interactions occurred before, during and after the sessions, corresponding to
remarkable moments for the people who had the opportunity to attend them. Through oral
reports collected in interviews with people who were present in the old cinema sessions
in Cajazeiras, we intend to analyze the set of sociability relations stimulated by this
frequency and the way this set of interactions expanded, starting from the cinema to other
spaces in the city.
