Rosenstone Goes to Quilombo /The Quilombo Goes to Rosenstone

ABSTRACT

This article examines Cacá Diegues's Quilombo (1984) through Robert Rosenstone's concept of the innovative historical film, focusing on the film's reworking of Palmares through music, ritual, performance and allegory. While Rosenstone provides a productive framework for understanding its cinematic engagement with the past, the article argues that Black Brazilian thought complicates this perspective. In dialogue with Beatriz Nascimento and Abdias do Nascimento, it explores the quilombo as an experience of historical continuity connecting body, territory, memory and political possibility. Quilombo thus not only exemplifies Rosenstone's category but also exposes its interpretative limits.