Revolution in the Terra Do Sol by Sarzynski Sarah

Author:Sarzynski, Sarah [Sarzynski, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2018-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

FIGURE 4.6 Scene from Linduarte Noronha’s Aruanda (1959).

Source: Centro de Documentação e Informação da FUNARTE, Rio de Janeiro.

Aruanda was the first film of the Paraíban journalist Linduarte Noronha and his cameraman Rucker Vieira. After publishing a series of articles on the quilombo community of Santa Luzia de Sabugi for O Cruzeiro (Paraíba) in 1958,64 Noronha and Vieira applied for technical support and equipment from the famous Brazilian documentary filmmaker Humberto Mauro at the INCE and the Joaquim Nabuco Institute of Social Research in Recife. In 1959, their small production crew drove a jeep loaded with equipment as far as the road went and then proceeded on foot to the community. As can be imagined based on the filmmakers’ lack of filmmaking experience and the challenging production conditions, Aruanda is a rough, technically “imperfect” film. It features dramatic lighting contrasts, jump cuts, a metaphoric flashback, and hand-held camera shots, and it uses direct sound along with a music track featuring regional folkloric music. Noronha also used nonprofessional actors to interpret the roles of the main characters in the docudrama reenactment sequences, but these characters never actually speak in the film.

Ganga Zumba is a feature film that can be classified as a “road movie” because it shows the characters gaining awareness of their oppression and rebelling. Unlike dominant representations of Brazilian slaves and nordestinos, the majority of the slaves in Ganga Zumba are politically conscious, willing to use violence, and influenced by their African ancestry. Ganga Zumba opens with still frames of historical etchings of the sugar industry and the slave regime in Northeastern Brazil, then cuts to an almost naked black woman on her knees, slumped in front of a pole, her arms bound. It is nighttime, and she has been whipped to death. A group of slaves approach her, in silence at first, and then they start singing “Chora papai, chora mamai” (Cry father, cry mother) to an African drumbeat, a song and rhythm that are repeated throughout the film. Diegues then cuts to the Big House, showing the plantation owners observing the spectacle from a distance; this is followed by a series of close-ups of the slaves’ faces. The slaves exit the screen, and the camera remains focused on the dead woman for an uncomfortable length of time. A female domestic slave enters the frame, kneels, and begins humming the same tune. The camera stays on this scene as the film credits roll to the side of the two women, emphasizing both the violence of Brazilian slavery and the solidarity among slaves.

The lead character in Ganga Zumba, Antão, is the son of the dead woman and the grandson of the King of Palmares. His image was used in the promotional materials for the film (see Figure 4.7). At the beginning of the film, Antão describes Palmares as a myth that an older slave, Aroroba, tells stories about, a free land where many people of the same color live. Before deciding to rebel, Antão skeptically declares to Aroroba, “The white man has guns and power.

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