Abstract

In Punk Molotov, director João Carlos Rodrigues follows some moments by the young people from the punk rock band Coquetel Molotov, directly interviewing them and additionally participating as a constant presence in its audiovisual narrative. The spacial and temporal segment, which focuses on the periphery of the Rio de Janeiro city during the ending times of the civil-military dictatorship (1983-1984), signals the intent to represent an identitary construction outside the hegemonic structure. However, the limits between a territorialized identity and the edification of a performative image become eroded during the narrative. The model that both director and young protagonists nurtured around the anarchist movement, synthesized in a poignant scene in which they hold books by the movement’s authors, incited the questioning of how tenuous identitary constructions can be. The scenic style appropriates anarchists referentials, though such a construction doesn’t seem to root itself in an orthodox ethics of libertarian thought. Transitioning from the rebellious aesthetic of punk to a desire and becoming of a new libertarian ehtos, one understands how images align in an everyday exercise of “nomad subjects”. Thinking about identites under a singlarities point of view, in light of the conceptual baggage brought by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, the scope is to interpret the iconic anarchist representations undergone by the Punk Molotov documentary.