Arid Zone
Fernanda Pessoa
Fifteen years after her time in Arizona as an exchange student, Fernanda Pessoa returns to find an America between fiction and cliché.
A
Film Archive
Arid Zone
Documentary Film
2019
76 minutes
subtitles:
English
Mesa, Arizona, east of Phoenix and about 200 kilometres from the Mexican border, is said to be the most conservative city in the U.S. In 2001, Fernanda Pessoa was an exchange student in Mesa. She was 15 years old at the time. 15 years later she returned, in the weeks before the presidential election won by Donald Trump. Starting with numerous photos of that earlier time, Pessoa searches out people she met as a teenager. She finds a new approach to the United States, is more aware of everything she experiences; after all, she has grown up in the meantime. She conducts an inner dialogue with her former self as she rediscovers this country whose inhabitants are so proud of the fact that it’s theirs: America. The land of firearms and peculiar sports, the land that invented the shopping mall and the Western movie.
Pessoa quotes the philosopher Baudrillard, to whom America seemed like a fiction. With her film, she turns it into an experience of reality that ultimately makes her understand more about her own country: “Our cultural colonialism came to collect the bill.” “Arid Zone” (Arizona) opposes that colonialism with the gentle resistance of precise observation.
Bert Rebhandl
Honorable Mention in the Next Masters Competition Long Documentary and Animated Film.
Pessoa quotes the philosopher Baudrillard, to whom America seemed like a fiction. With her film, she turns it into an experience of reality that ultimately makes her understand more about her own country: “Our cultural colonialism came to collect the bill.” “Arid Zone” (Arizona) opposes that colonialism with the gentle resistance of precise observation.
Bert Rebhandl
Honorable Mention in the Next Masters Competition Long Documentary and Animated Film.
The annotations to the films in the Official Selection were written by the members of the selection committee and guest authors. All quotes from DOK Leipzig catalogue articles must be identified as such and cite the author’s name. Some original titles and names have been transcribed resp. transliterated. We apologise that we cannot cite individual image sources and rights in our festival publications or festival coverage. Please note that the visual material is published exclusively for the purposes of promoting specific films or festival programmes. No transmission to third parties is provided and would only take place with the explicit agreement of the owners of the rights. The rights to the images lie with the respective copyright owners.
Flesh
Camila Kater
A vivid, beautiful and hauntingly animated documentary by and about five women. Their own physicality and a multi-perspective view of femininity play the main roles.
Flesh
Animated Film
2019
12 minutes
subtitles:
English
Credits
Chelo Loureiro, Livia Perez
Camila Kater
Sofia Oriana Infante, Julia Teles
Samuel Mariani
Samuel Mariani
Camila Kater, Giovana Affonso, Flavia Godoy, Cassandra Reis, Leila Monsegur
Camila Kater, Ana Julia Carvalheiro
Xabier Ferreiro, Julia Teles, Luis Felipe Labaki
An animated documentary in five chapters by and about five female personalities. In the leading roles are their own physicality and a multi-perspective view of femininity. Because origin, environment and socialisation – with their occasionally perverted and compulsive side-effects – have a weight of their own. These autobiographical reflections gain depth of focus and impact through the choice of different haptic animation techniques. Vivid, haunting, beautiful.
Nadja Rademacher
Nadja Rademacher
The annotations to the films in the Official Selection were written by the members of the selection committee and guest authors. All quotes from DOK Leipzig catalogue articles must be identified as such and cite the author’s name. Some original titles and names have been transcribed resp. transliterated. We apologise that we cannot cite individual image sources and rights in our festival publications or festival coverage. Please note that the visual material is published exclusively for the purposes of promoting specific films or festival programmes. No transmission to third parties is provided and would only take place with the explicit agreement of the owners of the rights. The rights to the images lie with the respective copyright owners.
Guaicurus Street
João Borges
A red-light district in Belo Horizonte. The camera is admitted into a “running house”. Love for sale looks like a routine, dreary assembly line exercise here, sometimes almost like a comedy.
Guaicurus Street
Documentary Film
2019
75 minutes
subtitles:
English
German
A red light district in Belo Horizonte. The brothels are soliciting customers in all the colours of the night. The windows here are usually open, there is at most a guy in a plastic chair sitting in front of the door. The camera is admitted into one of the “running houses”. We see a long shot, almost like on a surveillance monitor, of men in a stark corridor scurrying from woman to woman. But suddenly we’re really close to some negotiations (“3 positions for 25 Real”) and at some point there’s an “impossible” cut: a reverse shot from the other side of the door, out of the woman’s room. We see sex workers tidying up, hanging around, and gossiping. They talk about violence, of pretend and real orgasms. But we also see sex scenes, played by actors, in which love for sale sometimes looks like a practiced, dreary assembly line exercise, sometimes almost like a comedy.
If this film systematically blurs the boundaries between the documentary and the fictional gaze, it has to do with the wish to leave the women their dignity and to avoid all-too-familiar images of misery. But it also has to do with the fact that sex can never be separated from fictions and projections.
Lukas Foerster
If this film systematically blurs the boundaries between the documentary and the fictional gaze, it has to do with the wish to leave the women their dignity and to avoid all-too-familiar images of misery. But it also has to do with the fact that sex can never be separated from fictions and projections.
Lukas Foerster
The annotations to the films in the Official Selection were written by the members of the selection committee and guest authors. All quotes from DOK Leipzig catalogue articles must be identified as such and cite the author’s name. Some original titles and names have been transcribed resp. transliterated. We apologise that we cannot cite individual image sources and rights in our festival publications or festival coverage. Please note that the visual material is published exclusively for the purposes of promoting specific films or festival programmes. No transmission to third parties is provided and would only take place with the explicit agreement of the owners of the rights. The rights to the images lie with the respective copyright owners.
Skin Color
Livia Perini
Kauan’s favourite pastimes are playing football and swimming in the sea. Two things spoil them for him: school and the sunrays that his skin can’t tolerate.
Eleven-year-old Kauan’s favourite pastimes are playing football and swimming in the sea. Two things spoil them for him: school and the sunrays that his skin can’t tolerate. Sunscreen and long-sleeved T-shirts are his daily companions. Luckily, he’s not the only one in the family who struggles with albinism. A film about sticking together and enjoying life.
Marie-Thérèse Antony
Marie-Thérèse Antony
The annotations to the films in the Official Selection were written by the members of the selection committee and guest authors. All quotes from DOK Leipzig catalogue articles must be identified as such and cite the author’s name. Some original titles and names have been transcribed resp. transliterated. We apologise that we cannot cite individual image sources and rights in our festival publications or festival coverage. Please note that the visual material is published exclusively for the purposes of promoting specific films or festival programmes. No transmission to third parties is provided and would only take place with the explicit agreement of the owners of the rights. The rights to the images lie with the respective copyright owners.
Cinema Morocco
Ricardo Calil
Homeless persons occupy the formerly glamorous cinema palace in São Paulo. A theatre workshop recalls the building’s past – and creates projection surfaces for broken biographies.
Cinema Morocco
Documentary Film
2018
76 minutes
subtitles:
English
A strange newsreel report is all that recalls the glamorous past of the Cine Marrocos in São Paulo today. We see Irene Dunne, Erich von Stroheim and Abel Gance at the International Film Festival of Brazil 1954, walking up the red carpet to the opulent cinema palace, and Fubuki Koshiji stumbling and “revealing her delicate eastern foot” (original voiceover). Forty years later the twelve-floor building was suddenly empty, for two decades. When the announced renovation didn’t happen, a community of homeless people squatted there in 2013. At times more than 2,000 people from 17 countries lived in the gutted and graffiti covered ruin.
At the initiative of the eponymous film project, films from the first festival year were screened in the re-opened cinema and a theatre workshop was founded where the actor-squatters worked on iconic film scenes, for example from “Sunset Boulevard”, “La Grande Illusion”, “Julius Caesar” and “Sawdust and Tinsel.” On the backdrop of imminent eviction, the film documents the theatre work, “co-written” by broken biographies and resulting in cinematographic re-enactments. Norma Desmond, Marc Anthony, the circus rider Anne and the fighter pilot Maréchal literally become projection surfaces – for experiences as varied as war trauma, depression, disgust of affluence and post-colonial alienation.
Esther Buss
Golden Dove in the Next Masters Competition Long Film
At the initiative of the eponymous film project, films from the first festival year were screened in the re-opened cinema and a theatre workshop was founded where the actor-squatters worked on iconic film scenes, for example from “Sunset Boulevard”, “La Grande Illusion”, “Julius Caesar” and “Sawdust and Tinsel.” On the backdrop of imminent eviction, the film documents the theatre work, “co-written” by broken biographies and resulting in cinematographic re-enactments. Norma Desmond, Marc Anthony, the circus rider Anne and the fighter pilot Maréchal literally become projection surfaces – for experiences as varied as war trauma, depression, disgust of affluence and post-colonial alienation.
Esther Buss
Golden Dove in the Next Masters Competition Long Film
The annotations to the films in the Official Selection were written by the members of the selection committee and guest authors. All quotes from DOK Leipzig catalogue articles must be identified as such and cite the author’s name. Some original titles and names have been transcribed resp. transliterated. We apologise that we cannot cite individual image sources and rights in our festival publications or festival coverage. Please note that the visual material is published exclusively for the purposes of promoting specific films or festival programmes. No transmission to third parties is provided and would only take place with the explicit agreement of the owners of the rights. The rights to the images lie with the respective copyright owners.
Elections
Alice Riff
So much for political apathy! The student council elections at a school in São Paulo demonstrate the strains of politics and the temptations of populism – and how to resist them.
Elections
It’s best to learn about the workings (and snags) of democracy by practicing it. At a public high school in São Paulo, the elections for the student council are coming up. Various teams compete for the best ideas, the coolest campaign poster and the most votes. It’s vital not to be carried away by populist actions and to put personal interest aside. Just like in “big” politics, the candidates walk the line between honest commitment and superficial show effects in election debates. But the sudden appearance of the police at the school gates instantly makes it clear how important it is that the students are able to speak with one voice.
Luc-Carolin Ziemann
Nominated for the Young Eyes Film Award
Luc-Carolin Ziemann
Nominated for the Young Eyes Film Award
The annotations to the films in the Official Selection were written by the members of the selection committee and guest authors. All quotes from DOK Leipzig catalogue articles must be identified as such and cite the author’s name. Some original titles and names have been transcribed resp. transliterated. We apologise that we cannot cite individual image sources and rights in our festival publications or festival coverage. Please note that the visual material is published exclusively for the purposes of promoting specific films or festival programmes. No transmission to third parties is provided and would only take place with the explicit agreement of the owners of the rights. The rights to the images lie with the respective copyright owners.
Stone Engravings and the Three-Colored Chickenpox Tale
Luciana Mazeto, Vinícius Lopes
A game with the oldest stories in the world in Brazil: cave paintings, Guaraní creation myths, vanished animals, thinking rocks, the antiquity of film and state of the art cinema.
Stone Engravings and the Three-Colored Chickenpox Tale
Documentary Film
2018
21 minutes
subtitles:
English
A cinematic game with the oldest stories of the world in Brazil. The visible and the invisible exist side by side and can be recorded. Scratched drawings in caves, vanished animals, Guaraní creation myths, children’s games and thinking rocks. Add as visible evidence: the contemporary and ancient film and sound recording technologies that were used.
Saskia Walker
Saskia Walker
The annotations to the films in the Official Selection were written by the members of the selection committee and guest authors. All quotes from DOK Leipzig catalogue articles must be identified as such and cite the author’s name. Some original titles and names have been transcribed resp. transliterated. We apologise that we cannot cite individual image sources and rights in our festival publications or festival coverage. Please note that the visual material is published exclusively for the purposes of promoting specific films or festival programmes. No transmission to third parties is provided and would only take place with the explicit agreement of the owners of the rights. The rights to the images lie with the respective copyright owners.
The Invented Village
Credits
Liliana Sulzbach, Thaís Fernandes
Liliana Sulzbach
Caetano Maschio Santos, Carlos Badia
Francisco Alemão Ribeiro, Thaís Fernandes
Angela K. Pires, Thaís Fernandes
Luis Otávio Feldens
Liliana Sulzbach
Kiko Ferraz, Chrístian Vaisz
Wallace Morais
Tatiana Sperhacke
Wallace Morais
Tatiana Sperhacke, Liliana Sulzbach, Thaís Fernandes
Wallace Morais
“I wound up in here. In paradise. Itapuã is like a five star hotel for me. It’s my home.” A village surrounded by mountains and forest. Founded in the 1940s, Itapuã was home to almost 2,500 people so far. Today only 35 are left, all of them over 60. The portrait of a miniature city, built as the solution to a complex problem. A virtual map in which the content can be activated step by step guides us through the story. The inhabitants reminisce. Old documents and photos as well as films shot then and today gradually reveal the sad truth that links those who remained in Itapuã.
The annotations to the films in the Official Selection were written by the members of the selection committee and guest authors. All quotes from DOK Leipzig catalogue articles must be identified as such and cite the author’s name. Some original titles and names have been transcribed resp. transliterated. We apologise that we cannot cite individual image sources and rights in our festival publications or festival coverage. Please note that the visual material is published exclusively for the purposes of promoting specific films or festival programmes. No transmission to third parties is provided and would only take place with the explicit agreement of the owners of the rights. The rights to the images lie with the respective copyright owners.
Body of Crime
Pedro Rocha
Ivan is a young Brazilian delinquent going through a probationary programme. An electronic shackle controls his location, but not his thoughts.
Body of Crime
One manifestation of Ivan’s burden is strapped around his leg: an electronic anklet that monitors his location. The critical moments come at night when he ought to be with his family, is under a curfew, but hears voices whispering ideas that seem realisable only outside the house – and therefore outside the law. Ivan is a tiger behind bars whose stride becomes more restless every day. He’s also plagued by an imaginary scenario: he knows men who got rid of the beeping devices and are now free. And he knows others whose attempts to free themselves failed. The consequence: back to prison. Ivan balances between Scylla and Charybdis – an excitement that has long become resentment and calls for a solution.
Carolin Weidner
Nominated for Young Eyes Film Award
Carolin Weidner
Nominated for Young Eyes Film Award
The annotations to the films in the Official Selection were written by the members of the selection committee and guest authors. All quotes from DOK Leipzig catalogue articles must be identified as such and cite the author’s name. Some original titles and names have been transcribed resp. transliterated. We apologise that we cannot cite individual image sources and rights in our festival publications or festival coverage. Please note that the visual material is published exclusively for the purposes of promoting specific films or festival programmes. No transmission to third parties is provided and would only take place with the explicit agreement of the owners of the rights. The rights to the images lie with the respective copyright owners.
Luiza
Caio Baú
“Live the Old Times”, Luiza’s T-shirt reads in big letters. At first the sheltered 24-year-old girl with the blue-green strands of hair leafs through an album of photos from her childhood.
Luiza
“Live the Old Times”, Luiza’s T-shirt reads in big letters. At first the sheltered 24-year-old girl with the blue-green strands of hair leafs through an album of photos from her childhood. But soon only the presence with her boy-friend counts, and when it’s the right time for the first sex. The family’s fears, the desire for autonomy, a budding sexuality and otherworldliness are packed into an ambivalent scenario.
Esther Buss
Esther Buss
The annotations to the films in the Official Selection were written by the members of the selection committee and guest authors. All quotes from DOK Leipzig catalogue articles must be identified as such and cite the author’s name. Some original titles and names have been transcribed resp. transliterated. We apologise that we cannot cite individual image sources and rights in our festival publications or festival coverage. Please note that the visual material is published exclusively for the purposes of promoting specific films or festival programmes. No transmission to third parties is provided and would only take place with the explicit agreement of the owners of the rights. The rights to the images lie with the respective copyright owners.
Paulistas
Daniel Nolasco
Somewhere in the Brazilian savannah Paulistas is struggling to survive. The rural region has lost its youth and the abuse of nature has left it cracked, but its soul still colours everything.
Paulistas
Somewhere in the Central Brazilian savannah Paulistas is scraping by. The rural region has lost its youth, the houses are cracked, but it has preserved its dignity. Meadow, river, sparsely furnished interiors – like the landscape and the environments the sounds and images of this film expand gently, but with impressive power. Quiet, superbly framed shots and perfectly timed sounds portraying farm work and daily routines say what they have to say without becoming garrulous. In the midst of desertion they reveal a warmth kept alive by the inhabitants.
“Paulistas” may sing their praise but it doesn’t glorify anything. The televised philanthropic assurances of the operators of the nearby dam crumble like the damaged houses made uninhabitable because people meddled with nature. And then it’s July and the young people return briefly for the holidays. The mobile phone into which love messages are typed shines like a star in the nocturnal cornfield, the motorcycle leaves a curved line of dust running along the whole width of the summer meadows. A motif of hard to describe sounds somewhere between machine metal and brass instruments is heard. Paulistas is marked by circumstances, but its soul still colours everything.
André Eckardt
“Paulistas” may sing their praise but it doesn’t glorify anything. The televised philanthropic assurances of the operators of the nearby dam crumble like the damaged houses made uninhabitable because people meddled with nature. And then it’s July and the young people return briefly for the holidays. The mobile phone into which love messages are typed shines like a star in the nocturnal cornfield, the motorcycle leaves a curved line of dust running along the whole width of the summer meadows. A motif of hard to describe sounds somewhere between machine metal and brass instruments is heard. Paulistas is marked by circumstances, but its soul still colours everything.
André Eckardt
The annotations to the films in the Official Selection were written by the members of the selection committee and guest authors. All quotes from DOK Leipzig catalogue articles must be identified as such and cite the author’s name. Some original titles and names have been transcribed resp. transliterated. We apologise that we cannot cite individual image sources and rights in our festival publications or festival coverage. Please note that the visual material is published exclusively for the purposes of promoting specific films or festival programmes. No transmission to third parties is provided and would only take place with the explicit agreement of the owners of the rights. The rights to the images lie with the respective copyright owners.
Tailor
Animadoc
2017
10 minutes
subtitles:
English
“I started drawing comic books at a time when I was depressed. Many people told me that it helped them a lot, helped them discover themselves.” Tailor from Rio de Janeiro is a transsexual. In his animated visual worlds he recounts his own problems and experiences and gives words and images to Miro, Tertuliana and Bernardo, too. A wild, playful, funny, serious, poetic mixture of comic, documentary and experience, by and about transgender persons.
Frederik Lang
Frederik Lang
The annotations to the films in the Official Selection were written by the members of the selection committee and guest authors. All quotes from DOK Leipzig catalogue articles must be identified as such and cite the author’s name. Some original titles and names have been transcribed resp. transliterated. We apologise that we cannot cite individual image sources and rights in our festival publications or festival coverage. Please note that the visual material is published exclusively for the purposes of promoting specific films or festival programmes. No transmission to third parties is provided and would only take place with the explicit agreement of the owners of the rights. The rights to the images lie with the respective copyright owners.
Rogério Duarte, the Tropikaoslist
José Walter Lima
A portrait of the Brazilian artist, musician and poet – and a wild trip through avant-garde and pop, underground and tropicalismo.
Rogério Duarte, the Tropikaoslist
Rogério Duarte (1939–2016) was a Brazilian graphic designer, typographer, musician and poet. He saw himself as a popular avant-garde artist, both the tribune of Brazilian underground in film, music and painting and a folk artist. As a contemporary and companion of Glauber Rocha, Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso he helped found the Tropicalism movement in the 1960s, though he later turned heretic because he refused to forgive the movement’s commercial sell-out.
José Walter Lima’s film portrait is an admiring homage to a natural born independent who practiced his art out of a deep, almost cosmic-religious attitude to life and the world. At one point the director elicits this credo from his protagonist: “Art is not a profession. Art is an approach. It is a way for you to approach things.”
Ralph Eue
José Walter Lima’s film portrait is an admiring homage to a natural born independent who practiced his art out of a deep, almost cosmic-religious attitude to life and the world. At one point the director elicits this credo from his protagonist: “Art is not a profession. Art is an approach. It is a way for you to approach things.”
Ralph Eue
The annotations to the films in the Official Selection were written by the members of the selection committee and guest authors. All quotes from DOK Leipzig catalogue articles must be identified as such and cite the author’s name. Some original titles and names have been transcribed resp. transliterated. We apologise that we cannot cite individual image sources and rights in our festival publications or festival coverage. Please note that the visual material is published exclusively for the purposes of promoting specific films or festival programmes. No transmission to third parties is provided and would only take place with the explicit agreement of the owners of the rights. The rights to the images lie with the respective copyright owners.
Tango
Francisco Gusso, Pedro Giongo
The ritual of “tango” is handed down from the ancestors to help end starvation and draught. The villagers collect sacrificial gifts.
Tango
Animated Film
2016
13 minutes
subtitles:
English
Credits
Antonio Junior, Francisco Gusso, Lígia Teixeira, Pedro Giongo
Francisco Gusso, Pedro Giongo
Francisco Gusso, Pedro Giongo
Francisco Gusso, Jéssica Luz, Pedro Giongo
Pedro Giongo
Francisco Gusso, Jéssica Luz, Pedro Giongo
Francisco Gusso, Pedro Giongo
Ale Rogoski, Pedro Giongo
The ritual of “tango” is handed down from the ancestors to help end starvation and draught. The villagers collect sacrificial gifts. Their reward is wealth, but in all this abundance they forget the duties of the sacrificial cult. Pedro Giongo and Francisco Gusso mesh parts of Franz Kafka’s “A Hunger Artist” with graphic reminiscences of Brazilian folklore and the crowded visual world of the Flemish renaissance in a remarkable parable.
André Eckardt
Nominated for mephisto 97.6 Audience Award
André Eckardt
Nominated for mephisto 97.6 Audience Award
The annotations to the films in the Official Selection were written by the members of the selection committee and guest authors. All quotes from DOK Leipzig catalogue articles must be identified as such and cite the author’s name. Some original titles and names have been transcribed resp. transliterated. We apologise that we cannot cite individual image sources and rights in our festival publications or festival coverage. Please note that the visual material is published exclusively for the purposes of promoting specific films or festival programmes. No transmission to third parties is provided and would only take place with the explicit agreement of the owners of the rights. The rights to the images lie with the respective copyright owners.
The Third Shore
Fabian Remy
The Brazilian João was kidnapped by the Kayapó as a child, grew up among them, later returned to civilisation and still feels homeless. Searching for traces on the Amazon and between two worlds.
The Third Shore
Documentary Film
2016
57 minutes
subtitles:
English
In 1953 the Villas-Bôas brothers, pioneers of indigenism in Brazil, made first contact with the Kayapó and recorded the amicable meeting in grainy black and white. They anticipated the conflicts between the tribe and the nation state and saw themselves as mediators. To their surprise they discovered a young white man among the Indians: João was the child of Brazilian settlers who had been kidnapped and raised by the Kayapó during the long-running struggle. As he retraces his path, a life between two worlds, without a fixed home, begins for him.
To Fabian Remy this story is a model to describe a society divided even today, though he doesn’t find João among the living. In his stead Thini-á accompanies the director on a biographical search for clues and lives through a mirrored identity conflict. He left his tribe to move to the megacity of Rio de Janeiro after he witnessed how indigenous culture was corroded by modern civilisation. But more and more often nostalgia draws him back to his roots. As he swings pendulum-like between the places, the film takes up his movements on the formal level and follows Thini-á on his rides across dusty plains and the Amazonas region – as a continuing documentary journey. Which would have suited João, too, who spent his later life as a ferryman between the riverbanks.
Lars Meyer
To Fabian Remy this story is a model to describe a society divided even today, though he doesn’t find João among the living. In his stead Thini-á accompanies the director on a biographical search for clues and lives through a mirrored identity conflict. He left his tribe to move to the megacity of Rio de Janeiro after he witnessed how indigenous culture was corroded by modern civilisation. But more and more often nostalgia draws him back to his roots. As he swings pendulum-like between the places, the film takes up his movements on the formal level and follows Thini-á on his rides across dusty plains and the Amazonas region – as a continuing documentary journey. Which would have suited João, too, who spent his later life as a ferryman between the riverbanks.
Lars Meyer
The annotations to the films in the Official Selection were written by the members of the selection committee and guest authors. All quotes from DOK Leipzig catalogue articles must be identified as such and cite the author’s name. Some original titles and names have been transcribed resp. transliterated. We apologise that we cannot cite individual image sources and rights in our festival publications or festival coverage. Please note that the visual material is published exclusively for the purposes of promoting specific films or festival programmes. No transmission to third parties is provided and would only take place with the explicit agreement of the owners of the rights. The rights to the images lie with the respective copyright owners.
The Nation That Didn't Wait For God
Lucia Murat, Rodrigo Hinrichsen
The Kadiweu in Mato Grosso in Brazil once acted in a film. Taking stock after the arrival of television, alcohol, the church, white people. A lost paradise.
The Nation That Didn't Wait For God
Documentary Film
2015
89 minutes
subtitles:
English
The opening sequence alone, which links the past and the present like a time tunnel, confirms Lucia Murat as one of the great storytellers of Brazilian cinema. In 1999 she shot a feature film in the Kadiweu reservation in Mato Grosso. 13 years later she returns to follow up on the lives of several protagonists who played small parts at the time. The contrast between the earlier images and those recorded recently reveals the Kadiweu’s problems: electrification brought television sets, then alcohol and the Protestant church. How can tradition, language and identity be preserved when the young people move to the cities? When the ministers object to the old traditions? When white cattle farmers settle illegally on the territory of the indigenous population? The film is an associative and narrative investigation into these issues, managing again and again to measure the distance that separates the Kadiweu from their past by small events and details – the Day of the Dead, the explanation of a name. They used to be a warrior people who fought on horseback. Today they wash their Japanese motorcycles in the river and negotiate land rights with lawyers. And still remain Kadiweu. This at least is the defiant statement of this amazing film’s final shot.
Matthias Heeder
Matthias Heeder
The annotations to the films in the Official Selection were written by the members of the selection committee and guest authors. All quotes from DOK Leipzig catalogue articles must be identified as such and cite the author’s name. Some original titles and names have been transcribed resp. transliterated. We apologise that we cannot cite individual image sources and rights in our festival publications or festival coverage. Please note that the visual material is published exclusively for the purposes of promoting specific films or festival programmes. No transmission to third parties is provided and would only take place with the explicit agreement of the owners of the rights. The rights to the images lie with the respective copyright owners.