When youths have a voice: an ethnographic study of media and youth cultures in Portugal

Abstract

Statistics show that the increase in violence in countries like Brazil and Portugal involves children and young people. This creates a stigma that in most cases involves situations of risk and abandonment, shifting the position of victims to social villains. The main motivation for this research was based on this perception. We use cinema as a means of reflection over violence, citizenship and youth. Contemporary cinema has repeatedly shown a part of society that in most cases is unknown. Films such as the Brazilian City of God, the Portuguese Zone J, the South African Wooden Camera and the Venezuelan Huelepega, ley de la Calle present, through fiction, the reality of children and young people who live in situations of similar risks, exclusion, violence and abandonment. Is this a coincidence (which we do not believe to be the case), or a reality as a result of this modern, globalized and industrial society we live in?