From sport to religion, myths to social narratives, this four-film programme documents and celebrates the Maxakali and Kisedjê peoples in rural Brazil – and shows that while rituals may be political, the political can also be ritualistic.
Programme
Log Race (Corrida de Tora)
dir. Kokoyamaratxi Renan Suya, Brazil 2021, 3 min., Portuguese with English subtitles
Log racing is an official sport of the Indigenous Peoples’ Games, one of the largest cultural and sporting meetings of Indigenous peoples in the Americas. This short captures a log race between two Indigenous groups at the Khikatxi village in the Wawi Indigenous Land.
This hypnotic work documents celebrations that evoke the spirits of dead children in Brazil. As their mothers perform rituals of memory and mourning, symbolic representations of the childrens’ bodies are taken to the Kuxex, the secluded sacred house where the Maxakali welcome the spirit-people of the Atlantic Forest.
Konãgxeka: The Maxakali Flood (Konãgxeka: o Dilúvio Maxakali)
In the Maxakali language, ‘Konãgxeka’ means ‘big water’. Co-directed by Isael Maxakali, winner of the 2020 Pipa Award, this Maxakali story tells of a flood sent by the Yãmîy spirits as punishment for man’s greed and selfishness – after which the spirits release a man from a tree trunk and invite him to marry a female animal.
Winner of the Best International Film prize at this year’s Sheffield Doc/Fest, this film takes a multilayered visual journey through Maxakali territory during a time of fierce deforestation and invasion. Filmed by Isael and Sueli Maxakali on their own land, the film stands as a manifesto against borders of all kinds: those that divide nations and those that demarcate land.
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Watch: Conversation from 1st Brazil Indigenous Film Festival
no. 236848.