ABSTRACT
Chapter 4 studies Miguel Gomes’s Tabu (2012), another eloquent example of the negative use of cinema for realist ends. As is the case with the The Act of Killing, Tabu addresses a nation’s tainted historical past by means of a relentless questioning of the film medium and its representational properties. Though similar in their self-reflexive method, the two films differ greatly in their approach. Whereas the former tracks down perpetrators of genocide in Indonesia in order to obtain the evidence of their crimes, in the latter, the horrors of Portuguese colonialism in Africa remain conspicuous by their absence. Both in Mozambique and Lisbon, where the film was shot, the sombre legacy of colonialism makes itself felt by resisting representation.
