In the lead-up to the UN Climate Summit, COP26, People’s Palace Projects, Queen Mary University of London and The University of Manchester, in partnership with the ICA and APIB, present 12 productions by Indigenous filmmakers from Brazil, home to the world’s largest remaining rainforest.
The three-day festival features shorts films, documentaries and animations that raise Indigenous voices. The programme celebrates their rituals and heritage and asserts their rights to their lands and to cultural expression, which have been brazenly dismantled and vilified under Brazil’s current government.
The filmmakers address these issues both poetically and provocatively in the first edition of this festival, which seeks to open up conversations about our role in preserving the planet and what we can learn from Indigenous people.
Curated by award-winning filmmaker Takumā Kuikuro and Dr Christian Fischgold, Lecturer in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory at State University of Campinas and GCRF Visiting Researcher at the University of Manchester School of Arts, Languages, and Cultures, the three day festival focuses on:
The Right to Earth (Friday, 22nd October)*: a programme of short works about different forms of Indigenous struggle – symbolic, practical, political, mythological – for the right to land. The Ritual Dimension (Saturday, 23rd October): 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. Orality, Film and History (Sunday, 24 October): Parakanã, Guarani–Nhandewa and Guarani–Kaiowá filmmakers produce a kind of video-orality to present Indigenous communities’ historical, social and philosophical perspectives.
*The opening night will be followed by a conversation with the festival curators, filmmakers and an Indigenous leader from APIB, Brazil.
“The right to land, the protection of the forest and the emphasis on the possibility of a different way of life are political components of the selected films. The camera and cinema have fundamental importance, either as an instrument of ethnographic creation or protection in conflict zones. These Indigenous women and men have managed to take Indigenous cinema out of the ghetto to promote the subversion and decolonisation of previously produced images.”
Takumā Kuikuro and Christian Fischgold
The 1st Brazil Indigenous Film Festival UK is produced by People’s Palace Projects in partnership with the ICA. Funded by Queen Mary University of London, The University of Manchester, Arts Council England and UK Research and Innovation through the Global Challenges Research Fund, this programme is supported by APIB – Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil.
Friday, 22nd October, 18:30, Cinema 1, ICA. Opening night: Screening + Q&A with festival curators
Saturday, 23rd October, 16:20, Cinema 1, ICA.
Sunday, 24 October, 16:20, Cinema 1, ICA.
The Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) is an independent organisation that supports the most pressing debates in contemporary culture. From its home on The Mall, the geographic heart of the UK establishment, the ICA presents a programme that speaks to the challenges of the 21st century: ground-breaking exhibitions, performances, independent film and keynote lectures by many of the world’s leading thinkers. The ICA is an Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation and supported by the DCMS Culture Recovery Fund.
