Going Through Remediations: colonial nostalgia in Tabu (Miguel Gomes, 2012).

Abstract

In this article, I suggest thinking about the activation of colonial nostalgia in the film Tabu (2012), by Portuguese director Miguel Gomes. This nostalgia is produced, among other factors, by the contrast created between a melancholic present in Lisbon in 2011 (Paraíso Perdido, part one) and a romanticized past situated in a fictional Portuguese colony in Africa on the eve of the Colonial War (1964 – 1975) (Paraíso, part two). According to Gomes, Tabu doesn't have the intention of criticizing Portuguese colonialism and the memory of the colonial past in the present. The director links his film to a metafictional reflection on the “Golden Ages” of occidental cinema. However, due to the Eurocentric gaze perpetuated, my aim is to explore how the film’s colonial nostalgia is activated by the remediation of two visual apparatuses: ethnographic films and classic Hollywood cinema. Finally, it is worth asking how much Tabu questions and how much it naturalizes the representation regimes practiced.