The Anachronistic Time of Indigenous Decimating

A Study of Three Documentaries on Genocides Perpetrated Against the Yanomami Population

Abstract

The article examines the theme of genocide in three Brazilian documentaries that expose the ongoing drama faced by the Yanomami people in the Amazon. By contextualizing recent attacks and threats to the survival of one of the largest recently contacted Indigenous groups in South America - whose territory extends across Brazil and Venezuela, disregarding national borders - the text highlights their presence in the states of Roraima and Amazonas. The documentaries Davi contra Golias – Brasil Caim (1993), A Última Floresta (2021), and O rastro do garimpo: povo Yanomami (2023) were selected for the distinct ways in which they articulate the violence and devastation to which the Yanomami have been subjected. These works mobilize a plurality of voices that juxtapose accounts of those implicated in the destructive processes with the testimonies of victims, who alternately assume the role of claimants denouncing violence or of aesthetic-political agents crafting their own narrative flows through experiences, accusations, and confrontations. The analysis draws on José Emilio Burucúa and Nicolás Kwiatkowski’s (2014) studies on the representation of massacres, as well as Lior Zylberman’s (2020, 2024) typologies of massacre spaces and perpetrators in documentary cinema. It also engages with perspectives from Jacques Rancière (2009, 2018, 2023) and Georges Didi-Huberman (2014, 2015, 2016, 2020), particularly their reflections on how manifestations of the present incorporate layers of the past and open pathways for future considerations. Through this theoretical and filmic dialogue, the article argues that these documentaries propose alternative ways of rendering visible bodies that have suffered - and continue to suffer - the enduring consequences of colonization, while also positioning documentary practice as a critical arena for disputing narratives on violence, memory, and Indigenous resistance.