Figures traced by sound and light: the aural staging of Ex-Pajé

ABSTRACT

This article investigates sound in the mise en scène of the documentary Ex-Pajé (2018) by Luiz Bolognesi. In indigenous societies, worldviews are equivalent to “world hearings”, with the ear (yapú) being central to thought (Bastos, 2012). Using the internal analysis of image and sound (Aumont e Marie, 2009) as its methodology, the study examines how sound modifies scenes and the meaning of the film, proposing that the fundamental and archetypal sounds of the forest – the source of the sonic richness of the Paiter Suruí healing rituals – are integrated into the image to create “audiovisual effects” (Chion, 2009), especially the “effects of meaning”, fundamental in the construction of the film’s mise en scène.

KEYWORDS
documentary cinema; cinematic sound; mise en scène ; amerindian cosmologies