Talitha Ferraz

Talitha Ferraz holds a PhD in Communication and Culture from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, with a Sandwich PhD period at Nova University of Lisbon, Portugal. In her PhD thesis, she focused on “station cinemas”, an extinct circuit of movie theatres which in the 20th Century were located in front of many railway stations in the “Zona da Leopoldina”, a poor suburb of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

In Brazil, she works as a lecturer of Journalism and Cinema at the Estácio de Sá University and as a professor of the Journalism Department at Escola Superior de Propaganda e Marketing (ESPM) in Rio de Janeiro. She also is an associate researcher at the Interdisciplinary Coordination of Contemporary Studies of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. During a special leave from her academic activities in Brazil, Dr. Ferraz worked as a post-PhD researcher at the Centre for Cinema and Media Studies – Ghent University, Belgium – with the support of the Capes Foundation of the Ministry of Education of Brazil. During those studies, she examined partnerships between the public and private sectors in projects of reopened cinemas, in Belgium and Rio de Janeiro.

Dr. Ferraz’s research focuses on how street movie theatres can provide special forms of sociability and urban occupation in the cities. In her studies, she examines a range of subjects such as the reopening of movie theatres, memory of spectatorship, business in cinematic exhibition and practices of cinemagoing in urban centres, including the assemblages between corporeity of the constructed cinema spaces and the affective maps that people make in their daily urban life. In 2009, Dr. Ferraz published the book “A segunda Cinelândia carioca” which is in its second edition (Mórula Edition, 2012). With an ethnographic approach, the book examines the rise and fall of one of the most important movie theatre hubs in Brazil, located in Tijuca, a middle class neighbourhood of Rio de Janeiro.