Abstract
This essay focuses on one of the privileged spaces of the Cinema Novo filmscape: the quilombo, or maroon settlement. Though largely neglected by film scholars, the quilombo is an abiding theme for Brazilian political filmmakers. It is the symbolic crossroads where a utopian strain of political thinking converges with a central preoccupation of Brazilian national identity – the question of Brazil's racial character. This essay examines the classic short documentary that introduced the quilombo to Brazilian Cinema. Aruanda (Linduarte Noronha, 1960) is about a rural community of descendants of escaped slaves. The film represents an anti-culturalist approach to the quilombo that was soon superseded by the culturalist appropriation of the quilombo by the Brazilian black movement, by filmmakers like Carlos Diegues, and later, by the Brazilian state. Aruanda locates the utopian element of the quilombo, not in a peculiarly African or Afro-Brazilian culture, but in the unalienated life-activity of its members.
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