The cemetery of lost souls: how an image of horror retells history and rediscovers Brazil

Abstract

In this paper, we discuss a segment of the movie The cemetery of lost souls (2020), by Rodrigo Aragão, as an image of horror that can “disassemble the history”(DIDI-HUBERMAN, 2015) and rediscover the idea of a nation through contemporary Brazilian horror cinema. We start with the notion of Benjaminian dialectical image proposed by Didi-Huberman (2015) contrasting the segment of Aragão’s movie with other images that portray the same historic moment at different periods, such as: The first mass in Brazil (1859-1861), by Victor Meirelles, The discovery of Brazil (1937), by Humberto Mauro, and Terra em transe (1967), by Glauber Rocha. We have noticed recurrences and ruptures in the aesthetic modes of portraying the same subject, prioritizing sometimes the naturalism and other times the allegory. From this perspective, Aragão’s movie establishes itself as a new method of reading this historic moment, privileging horror and conflict in order to think about the history of the country and its current context.

Keywords
film The cemetery of lost souls; disassembling images; horror cinema; The first mass in Brazil ; art history