The “Zama” movie: aesthetics and decolonial becomings

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of the film “Zama” (2017) by Lucrecia Martel, representing the thought in decoloniality, from the aesthetic rewrite to its central proposes, which constitutes impressions outside the hegemonic history composed in clichés of colonial times. The images forged in the film bring other provocations about the meanings of “Spanish America” in the 18th century. Through the clothing of Spaniards, Portuguese, slaves and freedmen, as well as indigenous body paintings, thus making the colonial territory constituted in the film compose visualities that rethink the displacement of subjects, inhabitants of an “in-between place”. The wait of the character Zama, who wants to leave, is translated by signs that dimension us to the cultural hybridity that Latin America inherits, characterized by memories, violence, affections and resistance.