Ganga Zumba and Quilombo by Cacá Diegues: two utopias for the broad present

Abstract

This article is about analyzing the films Ganga Zumba (1964) and Quilombo
(1984) for the remarkable experience of temporality built on the cinematographic narrative and aesthetics of the filmmaker Cacá Diegues. From Ganga Zumba to Quilombo, the same temporal movement is experienced. The utopia in the present turns to organize the
past towards the promised future. What distinguishes them in this common movement between the dimensions of time, in constant projection towards the future, erupts in the meeting of films with the historical events themselves. The strong influence of Cinema Novo movement, charged with a critical and ideological sense, in this interregnum of the military dictatorship, goes back to grant generous spaces for the valorization of black culture. The contemporary perception of the end of the sense of historical progression
is loaded in the comparison between the films (GUMBRECHT, 2011). Quilombo’s utopian strength leaves Ganga Zumba’s horizon of expectation of a political-revolutionary future,
to contemplate it in carnival tones (BAKHTIN, 1993).