{"id":360208,"date":"2020-11-09T16:21:02","date_gmt":"2020-11-09T19:21:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/?p=360208"},"modified":"2020-11-09T16:21:02","modified_gmt":"2020-11-09T19:21:02","slug":"cameras-in-the-operating-room","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/cameras-in-the-operating-room\/","title":{"rendered":"Cameras in the operating room"},"content":{"rendered":"

Surgical innovations developed in S\u00e3o Paulo universities helped Brazil gain international renown in cardiology in the mid-twentieth century. One of these technologies, the cardiopulmonary bypass machine, built in 1958 by doctors Adib Jatene<\/a> (1929\u20132014) and Domingo Braile<\/a>, turned open heart surgeries\u2015in which doctors open a patient’s chest to repair their heart\u2015into routine procedures. The device was used in the first heart transplant in Latin America, performed in 1968 by cardiologist Euryclides de Jesus Zerbini (1912\u20131993) at the University of S\u00e3o Paulo (USP) Hospital das Cl\u00ednicas. This and other advances in medical research in the country were recorded for decades through the lens of S\u00e3o Paulo photographer and filmmaker Benedito Junqueira Duarte (1910\u20131995), author of approximately 500 documentaries about the period of scientific growth in schools of medicine and pharmaceutical laboratories located mainly in S\u00e3o Paulo. “He was possibly Brazil’s first scientific documentary filmmaker devoted to health and medicine,\u201d claims historian M\u00e1rcia Regina Barros da Silva, a professor at the USP History Department who conducts research on Duarte’s work.<\/p>\n

She adds that the documentary filmmaker’s skill behind the camera sparked the interest of the medical community at a decisive moment. “There was a need to portray medicine as experimental,” says M\u00e1rcia, explaining that the establishment of new training programs hinged on proving that medical practice used scientific knowledge. This concern is explicit in the short film Uma escola de m\u00e9dicos<\/em> [A school for doctors], produced by Duarte in 1963 to commemorate the 30th <\/sup>anniversary of the S\u00e3o Paulo School of Medicine\u2015today associated with the Federal University of S\u00e3o Paulo (UNIFESP). “Despite its title, there are no scenes of doctors treating patients, or even showing the inside of the hospital,” says Barros da Silva. “Most of the film covers experiments, laboratories, and research equipment,” shares the historian, who published an article about the film in Revista Brasileira de Hist\u00f3ria da Ci\u00eancia <\/em>(Brazilian journal of science history) last year.<\/p>\n

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Iconographic Collection of the S\u00e3o Paulo Secretariat of Culture \/ Reproduced By B. J. Duarte Image Hunter <\/span><\/a> Construction of Av. 9 de Julho and tunnels, in S\u00e3o Paulo (1939): a record of the growth of the cityIconographic Collection of the S\u00e3o Paulo Secretariat of Culture \/ Reproduced By B. J. Duarte Image Hunter <\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

With Jatene’s technical assistance, Duarte’s filmography includes an extensive list of specialized titles, such as Marcapasso implant\u00e1vel <\/em>(Implantable pacemaker), Revasculariza\u00e7\u00e3o do infarte<\/em> (Revascularization after myocardial infarction), and V\u00e1lvula card\u00edaca artificial <\/em>(Artificial heart valve). It was media aimed at medical students and doctors in courses, workshops, and conferences, with the goal of promoting to the rest of the country the techniques developed by the S\u00e3o Paulo centers. “Duarte helped promote medical solutions and research results hitherto far removed from the reality of health care in Brazil,” says Barros da Silva. The technical content was no obstacle to esthetic experimentation. The first scene from Uma escola de medicos<\/em> (A school of doctors), for example, shows a wide aerial shot of the S\u00e3o Paulo School of Medicine compound. In his autobiography, published in 1982, the filmmaker writes that his work was about making artistic “what for some should be restricted to the scientific only.” Duarte was filming until close to his death, in the 1990s.<\/p>\n

Photography and cinema<\/strong>
\nBorn in Franca, in the state of S\u00e3o Paulo, the documentary filmmaker wanted to attend medical school, but his family’s financial difficulties prevented it and he ended up attending the S\u00e3o Paulo Law School. In the early 1930s, he began earning a living as a photographer\u2015a skill he learned from a Portuguese uncle during a stay in France. Back in S\u00e3o Paulo, he worked as a photographer for the newspaper Di\u00e1rio Nacional<\/em> until he was hired by the iconography section of the S\u00e3o Paulo Department of Culture (equivalent to a municipal secretariat), where he worked from 1935 to 1964. “It was M\u00e1rio de Andrade\u2015then-director of the Department of Culture\u2015who got Duarte a job at city hall,\u201d shares sociologist Afr\u00e2nio Mendes Catani, who wrote a PhD thesis on Duarte’s films in 1992. A retired professor at the USP College of Education, Catani points out how much Duarte had in common with the modernist author. “Both appreciated S\u00e3o Paulo\u2019s medical profession and its cultural management.”<\/p>\n

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Iconographic Collection of the S\u00e3o Paulo Secretariat of Culture \/ Reproduced By B. J. Duarte Image Hunter <\/span><\/a> J. B. Duarte: close to doctors, researchers, and filmmakersIconographic Collection of the S\u00e3o Paulo Secretariat of Culture \/ Reproduced By B. J. Duarte Image Hunter <\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Beginning in 1937, when he was an employee of the S\u00e3o Paulo City Hall, Duarte started making his first documentaries. Until 1954, the theme of Brazilian culture appeared frequently in his work, with an emphasis on education, public healthcare, and urban spaces. “His films portray, for example, the work of health educators and children undergoing medical care, as a means of registering the modernization process promoted by the federal government during the first half of the twentieth century,” stresses Barros da Silva. During this time, Duarte produced numerous documentaries commissioned by the city\u2019s administration, such as the Secretariats of Finance, Education, and Public Works, in addition to the Department of Culture. The researcher points out that the films, made from the perspective of the government, show Duarte’s concern for strengthening civilizing models in order to help the country catch up through formal education. “All of this coupled with hygiene campaigns promoted in S\u00e3o Paulo at that same time period.”<\/p>\n

Duarte shared the views of M\u00e1rio de Andrade and other intellectuals from S\u00e3o Paulo: that the activities should be documented, explains Carlos Wendel de Magalh\u00e3es, who served as director of the Cinemateca Brasileira between 2002 and 2012. Part of the filmmaker’s collection is preserved there. “The films were shown in exhibitions, schools, and public libraries as educational material. At the same time, they have become an important historical source for understanding the urbanization of S\u00e3o Paulo, which brings Duarte closer to scientific cinema rather than solely aligned with the educational genre,” explains Magalh\u00e3es. The filmmaker was indeed influenced by the likes of French director Jean Painlev\u00e9 (1902\u20131989), whose films on marine biology were educational, but also contained scientific information. “Painlev\u00e9 made a clear distinction between research films and films for promoting science, the latter being the genre in which he felt most at home,\u201d shares Barros da Silva, emphasizing that, in Brazil, the ethnographic documentaries produced by the Rondon Commission in the early twentieth century did something similar (see<\/em> Pesquisa FAPESP issue no.<\/em> 255<\/em><\/a>).<\/p>\n

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Film Uma Escola de Medicos<\/em><\/span><\/a> Scenes from the 1963 film Uma escola de m\u00e9dicos<\/em> (A school of doctors), about the 30th<\/sup> anniversary of the S\u00e3o Paulo School of MedicineFilm Uma Escola de Medicos<\/em><\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Duarte became more and more familiar with recording science, strengthening ties with well-known S\u00e3o Paulo doctors and researchers. “He began to be considered among a group of other documentary filmmakers dedicated to cinema and scientific cinema, such as Roquette Pinto, Humberto Mauro, and Alberto Federmann, who worked with microphotography at the Biological Institute of S\u00e3o Paulo,” shares the researcher. From then on, the filmmaker became sought out not only by universities, but also by national and multinational companies that were building research laboratories in the country, including Johnson & Johnson, Roche, and Rhodia. “These companies paid Duarte handsomely for institutional films that provided publicity and promoted research. It was one way he made money,” says Catani. “His work began to appear at academic events, scientific conferences, medical and nursing schools, and hospitals around the world.”<\/p>\n

In his memoirs, Duarte reflected on the challenges of producing scientific films and disseminating science\u2015challenges that remain to this day and are faced by other documentarians and YouTubers with science channels on the internet. “The goal is avoiding the slow pace and monotony of very analytical images,” he wrote in his autobiography. The films were self-funded or had sponsors that he sought out himself. During her research, Barros e Silva found reports where the filmmaker discusses how the use of cinematographic resources, such as cuts and scene transitions, can help add a certain “drama” to documentaries. The researcher claims that having access to a doctor’s or scientist’s gaze provided a new perspective on the reality of the scientific world, which to that point was obscure, but was becoming clearer as it materialized in the amplified cinematic images.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photographer and filmmaker Benedito Duarte has produced around 500 documentaries on medical activities and research in S\u00e3o Paulo","protected":false},"author":421,"featured_media":358409,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[152],"tags":[247],"coauthors":[740],"class_list":["post-360208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-retrospect","tag-medicine"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/421"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360208"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360208\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":360211,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360208\/revisions\/360211"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/358409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360208"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/revistapesquisa.fapesp.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=360208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}