When you’re freshman –and, currently, I’m in such position – you just … don’t know things. Actually, you do know that every single person that looks to you and say “welcome!” has an advice to give: “Stay away, girl… this professor is like hell”. In one particular case, it doesn’t happen. Professor Marcio, of “Introduction to Journalism: Epistemology and Techniques” is a brand new face across the Casper Libero’s corridors and classrooms.
Graduated in Journalism by UNESP (State University of Sao Paulo, in free translation), he has a Master’s Degree in Communication and Arts by the same Institution, and is working in his Doctorate’s Degree – guess what, still in there – about Economic and Cinematographic Politics. Marcio also teaches at Centro Universitário Belas Artes, for Journalism and the Post Graduate in Cinema, Radio and TV degrees.
As a professor of Casper and, specifically, of the freshmen, what is the approach to talk about something so huge like Journalism and all that it can involve?
It’s been 10 years that I teach at Colleges, and I can tell you that Journalism still is the charming and seductive thing that I studied years ago. Obviously, the main paradigm has changed since there – especially in an event that I call the “big bang” of communication, the web. And, because of that, our profession needs to be constantly rethink , renewed and discussed by myself and, of course, by the students. It’s a pleasure and unique experience teaching this generation, because I learn so much from them and with them!
I couldn’t tell you one single concept of what Journalism really is, but there are signs that we must preserve, like the Ethic. We can’t ever forget that this is timeless, no matter if in printed journals or in online magazines. Internet opened plenty opportunities – see Her Campus as an example! – to develop information and its techniques, but you can’t let go the compromise you have with the society.
Considering that a notable part of you professional formation focuses on Cinema and Audiovisual resources, do you think that may be a lack of these aspects in a journalist graduation nowadays, including Brazilian cinema?
For a journalist, any information is valuable, and the audiovisual view is not out of it. I learned to enjoy cinema when I was a child, and it was on TV, not at the movies. Today, we can see a big proliferation of TV Series on popular demand and that is awesome! I can’t even begin to see these series because I know that if once I do, I’ll never stop.
Of course we must watch movies, including the Brazilian ones, but what we shouldn’t do is to have prejudice about the blockbusters film, as an example. Avengers were the most watched movie in Brazil in 2015, and so what?
But you studied one of the most famous Brazilian movies of all time, Cidade de Deus (City of God), in your Master’s essay. Can be said that seeing this movie creates empathy in people when the favela subject is considered?
Cidade de Deus brought people into the movie theater back in 2002, and it was incredible. The C and D classes – majority living in favelas by that time – went to the movies, went to the shopping center, occupied that space. And this phenomenon still needs to be studied, as the movie do, so I can’t tell you it created empathy because it’s something that have to be researched.
This film opened opportunities for Brazilian directors to work abroad, and showed a historical excluded place to Hollywood. When you visit Rio de Janeiro – and that includes me -, you go to Copacabana and visit Cristo, but still don’t visit the true Cidade de Deus.
Scene of Cidade de Deus
That’s true… So, talking about places we’ve never been into and things we’ve never heard about before, what do you think that a communicator can’t leave for tomorrow?
Living. Yes, living! (laughs) There is not a formula or a single road that you can track in and have success. It is private, it’s your own life, so get out in the streets and do it: ask a lot (in his classes, Marcio says that the only stupid question is the one that have never been asked before), go discover your neighborhood and then, one day, you might discover the world. You certainly will suffer, I’m sorry, but one day you’ll see that it leaded you back to the right way.