A week ago, Brazilian cinema has been celebrating the Movie Indication I’m still here to three Oscar categories. The feature film reached the unprecedented feat by bringing to the canvases the history of Rubens Paiva’s family, federal deputy who had his mandate revoked by the military dictatorship and was later tortured and killed.
Inaugurating the Brazilian audiovisual calendar, the Tiradentes Cinema Show that Occurs throughout this week in the city of Tiradentes, Minas Gerais, it became another space to debate and celebrate the conquest. But the program also brought to the screens a movie that somehow rescues a story that enhances a little known brand of the same military regime: the violation of indigenous peoples.
“These are memories that cinema gives us a chance to revisit and can thus be thrown in the face of the Brazilian people in a way,” says ethnologist and filmmaker Roberto Romero, one of the directors of the documentary Yõg ãtak: my father, kaiowá.
Shown on Sunday (26), he addresses the subject in a side. The documentary tells Sueli’s reunion Maxakali with his father Luiz Kaiowá. “I didn’t know him. I was six months old and my sister was five when he left,” says Sueli, in debate about the film held on Tuesday (27). She is also one of the directors of the documentary.
Luiz Kaiowá is an indigenous Guarani-Kaiowá who arrived, through the National Indian Foundation (Funai), to work in Terra Maxacali, in Minas Gerais. He operated a tractor and married Sueli’s mother. However, he eventually returned to the land of the Guarani-Kaiowá in Mato Grosso do Sul.
It all happened “in the time of the soldiers” as the older indigenous people say that give their testimonials in the movie. They report the mistreatment to which they were subjected and deforestation, relegating the village to a reduced portion of land that did not even have water.
“Much of this territory was divided during the military dictatorship. Captain Manoel dos Santos Pinheiro, who was the nephew of the governor of Minas Gerais, was sent there to be the owner of that region and do whatever he wanted. He divided the land between the SPI employees themselves [Serviço de Proteção aos Índios] And after Funai, “says Roberto Romero, noting that the military also acted to prevent the demarcation.
The movie Yõg ãtak: my father, Kaiowá was Driven to eight hands: In addition to Sueli Maxacali and Roberto Romero, the quartet was also composed by Isael Maxakali and Luísa Lanna. A bus took the maxacalis to Guarani-Kaiowá village. Thus, the reunion between Sueli and his father was also the moment of communion between the two peoples.
Luisa argues that cinema looks more carefully to the memory that indigenous peoples keep from the military period. “The atrocities that happened were many and they are very little known to the population in general. But it is important to point out that it is a hole that is not only in cinematography. It is in history too,” emphasizes.
Director Luísa Lanna defends what cinema look at indigenous violations in the dictatorship. Photo: Leo Fontes/ Universe Production/ Disclosure
She sees the possibility of a parallel evolution. “Things are walking together. As historiography recognizes, cinematography recognizes. One thing pulls the other. And so it is possible that these stories are told and start to integrate the historical repertoire of the Brazilian population. But with Sure, I think having more notices dedicated mainly to indigenous authorships and indigenous directors [isso] can contribute to rescue these memories. “
Violations
Rights violations of the military regime have already been explored by different films. What is this companion?Zuzu Angel, Marighella, The year my parents went on vacation and Blood baptism These are some reference titles, which now adds I’m still here. However, none of them address what happened to the indigenous people.
Some books have been seeking to take these stories out of anonymity. One of the most recent is Green red tonereleased in 2022 by journalist and writer Frei Betto. The work chronicles a drama that has as its backdrop the massacre of indigenous Waimiri Atroari during the opening of highways in the Amazon between the 1960s and 1980s. Frei Betto, who participated in resistance against dictatorship, said in a recent interview with Brazil agency who currently understands that indigenous people were the greatest victims of the violence undertaken by the military.
In cinema, Luisa highlights as one of the reference works the film GRIN – Indigenous Rural Guardlaunched in 2016 under the direction of Roney Freitas and Isael Maxakali. Already in the movie Yõg ãtak: my father, kaiowáShe notes that this dictatorship memory appears differently from the records produced by the Western culture of white man. According to the director, it is not a watertight memory.
“It is built from the various stories that are passed on by the lines of the people who witnessed this moment, who lived this moment. They are telling each memory, but also their various perceptions of this story, what happened. They produce a memory which is alive and visible. And it is above all creative and inventive, in this sense that more than one story is always better than one story, “he says.
The director considers that there is a deconstruction of the idea of a story focused on a search for a unique and universal truth. Through the testimonials of the film, according to her, individual experiences and perceptions are presented.
Resistance
The maxakalis form a people with about three thousand people living in the region of Vale do Mucuri in Minas Gerais, divided into villages that occupy small territories. In most of them, there is no river and the Atlantic Forest landscape was replaced by pasture. The film also documents the struggle led by Sueli and Isael to resume a new territory for about 100 families. In one scenes, a plate is painted to demarcate the place.
Debate on the role of cinema brought together directors and indigenous people – Photo: Leo Fontes/ Universe Production/ Disclosure
“Before I travel to meet my father, I wanted to make my people more comfortable. We painted the sign to know that there is my people,” says Sueli. For Roberto Romero, by placing the film as part of the resumption process, the maxakalis turn it into a resistance instrument. He also highlights the decision to record the whole documentary in indigenous language. The languages of the two people portrayed are spoken: maxakalis and Guarani-Kaiowás.
“The maxacalis lost everything concrete, say so. But they preserved the memory of words. They resemble the names of all animals in the Atlantic Forest even though they have been living with them for decades. And these words are spoken as stories, as narratives. They are sung. And we try to show this in the movie: that the songs are part of social life, of everyday life.
For Isael Maxakali, preserving the language is one of the main motivations for making a movie. “It is not to erase our history. I like to make a movie so that Brazil can know our language,” he says.
