she personally felt at the time when she was first arrested for being a travesti in 1970 is very telling : “(…) it was my dad who told them to lock me up . I didn ’ t question my upbringing much , I was the one who was wrong (…) I deserved that .” Her lack of political thinking and conscience of her rights reflects the community ’ s feelings at the time – guilty , and deserving of being marginalised by society . The change happened with the emergence of a new attitude , which replaced the pervious feelings of guilt and started claiming a right to a public space of respect for homosexuality . This space was found in other organization attempts by feminist , black and native American groups and also , naturally , inside cultural and artistic contestation .
Filmmaking in Brazil , much like the LGBT + movement , entered a great period of exploration during the period of democratization after the end of the military dictatorship in 1985 ( Foster , 2010 , p . 2 ). Brazilian cinema , much like Mexico and Argentina , is one of the most extensive in Latin America . Despite this ,
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queer cinema only became prominent in the country in the XXI century , virtually a decade after the beginning of the New Queer Cinema movement , characterised for being “ intensely political and aesthetically innovative ” ( Rich , 2013 ). Previously , the scarce films depicting queer characters painted them as campy , their gender and sexuality reduced to jokes and a source of ridicule . This was as serious as cinema could go without being distorted by censorship ( Dennison , 2020 , p . 5 ). Meu Amigo Claudia shows us this early side of Brazil ’ s pictures . Wonder featured in several films where her character is the butt of jokes , and she is never classified within the films as a “ real women .” The documentary shows us a scene from one of her films , where Claudia ’ s character is thrown out of a clinic once another lady finds out she is not a cisgender woman : “ Get out ! (…) I hate men ! I despise men ! I can ’ t even smell them !” A lot of the films she starred in made transvestites and transgender actors either erotic , sexual or a funny caricature . The few times she got close
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