Transes do presente: Uma análise antropófaga e distrópica do filme Bacurau

Abstract

This paper analyzes the 2019 movie Bacurau, directed and written by Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles, through the anthropophagic thought of Oswald de Andrade (1995), as expressed in his essays and manifestos. This dissertation offers analyses of some of the works by the filmmakers from Pernambuco, while also tracing the genealogy of Brazilian cinema (Gomes, 1996), particularly focusing on moments of the Cinema Novo (New Cinema) and the contemporary revival of the 1990s. The political contexts of these temporal periods in Brazil, characterized by collectivities, is relevant for the investigates, and making connections between past and present, such as the Week of 1922, the Manguebeat movement, the Tropicália movement, and contemporary group of Brazilian musicians like Baiana System. Inside this paper, the critic discussions are about the conditions into the production of Brazilian cinematography while problematizing the themes around of these productions, particularly focusing on the issues of hunger and dreams (Rocha, 2013 [1965; 1971]). Additionally, a conceptualization of distropy is constructed through an analysis of cannibals (Lestringant, 1997; Montaigne, 2010 [1533-1592]), guided by the theories of becoming-animal (Deleuze; Guattari, 2012), becoming-jaguar (Mussa, 2011), and tropical habitation (Ferdinand, 2022). This concept of distropy arises from the author's concern that Bacurau could not be either a utopia or a dystopia. It also engages with the concept of Bem Viver (Good Living) (Solón, 2016), the experiences of indigenous peoples (Kopenawa; Albert, 2019; Krenak, 2019), and maroon communities, from quilombos (Nascimento, 1985), as well as dystopian and utopian literatures and movies, traversing through descolonial perspectives, using the Latin American conceptualization (Walsh, 2013; Mignolo, 2003) and understandings of the colonizer and colonized paradigm, as in Memmi (2007 [1957]) and Fanon (1968), the idea of Precarious Lives (Butler, 2015), and the construction of the subalterns (Spivak, 2010).