Collaborating since 2011, the Brazilian-based artists Bárbara Wagner and Benjamin de Burca have invented a new cinematic genre: not the music documentary, but the documentary musical. Blurring the line between fiction and verité, their experimental documentaries focus on how cultural forms of the past adapt in response to changing economic conditions. Within Wagner and de Burca’s films, the participants are scripted but play themselves. The films’ construction mimics the protagonists’ strategies as singers, dancers, and spoken word poets negotiate self-fashioning through the affective labour of social media outlets.
This is the first monograph on the artists.