Senseless Mimesis

This chapter discusses the second-to-last sequence of scenes in Serras da Desordem as indicative of the unredemptive quality of contemporary reenactment films. The conclusion relates the cold analytical record of the realities at the reservation of the Awá Guajá Indians to the perverse ethnography of Jean Rouch (Les Maitres Fous) and Luis Bunuel (Las Hurdes), where a purposeful indeterminacy regarding time and chronology, a stasis, and a foregrounded repetition and circularity imply a critical view that has none of the prospects of transformation proper to modern neorealist and verité reenactment. Framed by Serras’ relentless fragmentation, this sequence’s dry look suggests the power of reenactment to destabilize all documentary record.