Abstract
Bringing together testimonies from the Tupinambá people, recorded in May 2014 in the Tupinambá de Olivença Indigenous Territory in Southern Bahia (Brazil) and archival images, this documentary presents the struggle of the Tupinambá people to retake their land. They have been waiting for official territorial recognition since 2004. Because of this, they have mobilized collectively to recover their lands in what are known as retomadas de terras. This political action has allowed them to retrieve considerable portions of their territory, previously expropriated by non-Indigenous settlers. However, this has led to their criminalization and to violent attacks against them – perpetrated by the Brazilian state and by individuals and groups opposed to their rights, in spite of these being recognized by the Brazilian Constitution. The film shows the history of their dispossession and resistance – which is inextricably linked to the advance of the agricultural frontier at the end of the 19th century, to the rise of the cocoa colonels and to the recognition of Indigenous territorial rights by Brazil’s 1988 Constitution, and is told from the Tupinambá perspective. For the Tupinambá, the land belongs to the most important entities of their cosmology, the encantados. This research was supported by the National Association for Indigenous Affairs (ANAÍ).
Brazil, 2015, 24’57. Documentary film.
Subtitled in English.
Direction: Daniela Alarcon.
Research and screenplay: Daniela Alarcon.
Editing: Fernanda Ligabue.
Photography: Fernanda Ligabue.
Additional photography: Thiago Dezan and Paula Daibert.
Color grading: Fernanda Ligabue.
Sound: Fernanda Ligabue.
Original soundtrack: Bruno Prado and Daniel Carezzato.
Audio mixing and mastering: Bruno Prado and Daniel Carezzato.
Graphic design: Marina Kanzian.
Produced by Repórter Brasil.
Accomplished through crowdfunding.
