Cinema e sociabilidade: uma história das relações sociais promovidas pelo cinema em Cajazeiras-PB (1950-1980).

Abstract

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.