Based on his ever-changing performance Indian Tails, this video features Luna sitting alone in his darkened room in front of the TV on Christmas Eve. As he sits, he calls friends, family and ex-lovers, excusing himself from all their celebrations. Luna tells us, "In the work there is a thin line between what is fictional and what is non-fiction, and what is real emotion and what is art. … There is a cultural element where I let (or seem to let) people in on American Indian cultures.
Video in the Villages presents its recent progress, its indigenous workshops for training and production. Founded in 1987, the project began with the introduction of video to indigenous communities that produced documentaries for their own purposes. In 1995, the opening of a space on educational TV in Cuiabá led to “Indigenous Program.” Since 1997, Video in the Villages has invested in the formation of the first generation of indigenous documentary filmmakers through national and regional workshops.
Directed by Mari Corrêa and Vincent Carelli; edited by Mari Corrêa.
Logging and approximating a relationship between audio recordings of the artist and his father, and videos gathered of the landscapes they both separately traversed. The initial distance between the logger and the recordings, of recollections and of songs, new and traditional, narrows while the images become an expanding semblance of filial affect. Jáaji is a near translation for directly addressing a father in the Hočak language.
Anhedonia doesn't play to the back of the church. It shoots directly to the point with poetry and images that evoke controversy in one mind set and passion in another. Depression and suicide are met head on with Cuthand's honesty. Anhedonia shocks people into opening their eyes to the source of the illness in the Aboriginal community. Statistics, split images, words and flesh meld together making this short film long on compassion, screaming out for help and recognition of the mentally ill's dream of someday having a normal life.
Told through recollections of youth, learning, lore, and departure, this is an imagined myth for the Xąwįska — or the Indian Pipe Plant — used by the Ho-Chunk to revive those who have fainted.
The personal odyssey recorded in The Laughing Alligator combines methods of anthropological research with diaristic essay, mixing objective and subjective vision. Recorded while Downey and his family were living among the Yanomami people of Venezuela, this compelling series of anecdotes tracks his search for an indegenous cultural identity.
Over 6,000 gold prospectors invade the reserve of the Nambiquara of Sararé, and loggers raid the mahogany-rich forests, which are threatened by extinction. Pressure on the World Bank (with whom the government of Mato Grosso is negotiating a loan) could end prospecting, but the pillage of the forest continues.
In Portuguese with English subtitles.
Directed by Vincent Carelli, Maurizio Longobardi, and Virginia Valadão; edited by Tutu Nunes.
Chief Waiwai recounts for his village the story of a trip he and a small entourage made to meet the Zo’é, a recently contacted group whom the Waiãpi “know” through video. Both groups speak Tupi dialects and share many cultural traditions, but the Zo’é are currently experiencing the phenomena of contact that the Waiãpi underwent 20 years ago. Waiãpi cameraman Kasiripinã illustrates the Waiwai’s account of the trip with video. The Zo’é afford their visitors the chance to re-encounter the way of life and wisdom of their ancestors.
A woman raises her voice and gives a painful and endless speech that with time becomes even more overwhelming, because her words are heartbreaking and permanent impressions in the collective memory, stabbing with words an old Mexican film, a celluloid that tears apart until its disappearance.
This title is also available on the compilation What Was Always Yours and Never Lost.
A four-part documentary, Yãkwá shows the most important ritual of the Enauênê-Nauê Indians (Brazil). For seven months every year, the spirits are venerated with offerings of food, song, and dance so that they will protect the community. In The World Outside the Rock, the Yaõkwá festivities open with the Enauênê-Nauê preparing for the big fish-catch by making salt, canoes, and fish traps. In Dataware’s Revenge, groups of men leave the villages for two months and build dams on forest waterways to catch fish as they return from spawning.
Guided expertly by those who live on the land and driven by the pulse of the natural world, Mobilize takes us on an exhilarating journey from the far north to the urban south. Over every landscape, in all conditions, everyday life flows with strength, skill and extreme competence. Hands swiftly thread sinew through snowshoes. Axes expertly peel birch bark to make a canoe. A master paddler navigates icy white waters. In the city, Mohawk ironworkers stroll across steel girders, almost touching the sky, and a young woman asserts her place among the towers.
Video in the Villages presents its recent progress, its indigenous workshops for training and production. Founded in 1987, the project began with the introduction of video to indigenous communities that produced documentaries for their own purposes. In 1995, the opening of a space on educational TV in Cuiabá led to “Indigenous Program.” Since 1997, Video in the Villages has invested in the formation of the first generation of indigenous documentary filmmakers through national and regional workshops.
Directed by Mari Corrêa and Vincent Carelli; edited by Mari Corrêa.
Produced at the San Francisco Art Institute, and featuring a few musical numbers, this jungle drama deals with a commercial corporation infiltrating the Amazon to sell beauty aids to the indigenous peoples. Witch doctor magic and political intrigue run rampant in this hot house environment, and men and women deal with the beast within and without.
"I’ve been raised with stories of the medicine men in my family. A bundle that was used successfully to heal people. Stories of bear spirits that took care of us. I don’t know about my Scottish side as much, but I did know some of the last names of my ancestors over there. The Sinclairs and the Forsyths. I fell down a Google rabbit hole one day when the Survey of Scottish Witchcraft came out. There was one case with a last name and a location close to my Great Grandmother’s hometown that made me pause. It was a white magic case, protecting cattle, and talking with fairies.
The “greca”, the meander, is the main symbol weaved in the textiles made by the Navarro sisters, from Santo Tomás Jalieza, México. A geometrical form of an endless braid of diamonds, the “greca” represents corn (an entity worshiped by the pre-hispanic civilisations of Mesoamerica). It stands for sustenance, but materialises as well the feminine power of producing abundance and fertility - the textiles displaying this ongoing motives could be read as invocations for life and growth.
Chief Pedro Mãmãindê (who directed the proceedings and the shoot itself) describes the necessity of strengthening the girls of his village by secluding them after their first menses. After several months, the village throws a party, with singing, feasting, and the ritual abduction of the girl by an allied village. When the Nambiquara of Mato Grosso see videotape of themselves performing this ritual, the excess of Western clothing makes them uncomfortable. The ritual is then re-enacted with traditional body painting and adornment.
Forest Mind is a video work that emerges from the artist’s longstanding interest in the human interaction with the natural world. In a series of recent art projects, she has shed light on the cosmology of Indigenous communities and their political struggle to keep their forests alive.
Chief Waiwai recounts for his village the story of a trip he and a small entourage made to meet the Zo’é, a recently contacted group whom the Waiãpi “know” through video. Both groups speak Tupi dialects and share many cultural traditions, but the Zo’é are currently experiencing the phenomena of contact that the Waiãpi underwent 20 years ago. Waiãpi cameraman Kasiripinã illustrates the Waiwai’s account of the trip with video. The Zo’é afford their visitors the chance to re-encounter the way of life and wisdom of their ancestors.
An overview of the Video in the Villages Project, this documentary shows how four different Amazonian native groups (Nambiquara, Gavião, Tikina, and Kaiapó) have embraced video and incorporated it in the service of their projects for political and ethnic affirmation.
Directed and photographed by Vincent Carelli.
The daily life of the Hunikui village of Sâo Joaquim, on the river Jordâo in the state of Acre. Augustinho, village shaman and patriarch, and his wife and father-in-law, remember the fetters of the rubber plantations and celebrate a new era. Now, with their land demarcated, they can once again teach their traditions to their children and grandchildren.
Direction: Zezinho Yube
Photography: Zezinho Yube, Zé Mateus Itsairu, Vanessa Ayani, Fernando Siã, Josias Mana, Tadeu Siã
Editing: Mari Corrêa, Pedro Portella and Vincent Carelli
An urgent reflection on indigenous sovereignty, the undead violence of museum archives, and postmortem justice through the case of the "Kennewick Man," a prehistoric Paleo-American man whose remains were found in Kennewick, Washington, in 1996.
Directors: Adam Khalil, Zack Khalil, Jackson Polys
Director Of Photography: Samuli Haavisto
Producers: Mariana Silva, Pedro Neves Marques
Co Editors: Zack Khalil, Adam Khalil
Commissioned By: inhabitants, Contour Biennale 8, Natasha Ginawala
Executive Producer: Steve Holmgren
An Unangam Tunuu elder describes cliffs and summits, drifting birds, and deserted shores. A group of students and teachers play and invent games revitalizing their language. A visitor wanders in a quixotic chronicling of earthly and supernal terrain. These visions offer glimpses of an island in the center of the Bering Sea.
It's the time of celebration and merriment in the Alto Xingu. The dry season is coming to an end. The smell of the damp earth is mixed with the sweet perfume of pequi. But it has not always been like that: if it had not been for a death, the pequi would possibly not exist. Linking the past to the present, Kuikuro filmmakers tell a tale of dangers and pleasures, of sex and betrayal, where men and women, hummingbirds and alligators build a shared world.
Direction: Takumã and Maricá Kuikuro
Photography: Takumã, Mariká, Amuneri, Asusu, Jairão and Maluki
Contemplating mixed race identity in Canada, Cuthand presents us with images of blood ties and land ties for indigenous people, and questions the use of the words "white passing" and "light skinned." As a light skinned indigenous, Cuthand reiterates that racism and discrimination still happen for him, just in different ways. Community belonging is contrasted with the difference experiences he has from his darker skinned family. Ultimately, a video with more questions than answers, it situates the artist's body in historical trauma and ongoing colonial survival.
A remarkable work about the struggle of the Waiãpi tribe, an indigenous people of Brazil, to combat the encroachment of prospectors on their land. Using performative storytelling as well as documentary footage, the tape builds a history of the many negotiations and public performances that the Waiãpi engaged in with the Brazilian government to demarcate and preserve some of their land, and to regain control of their resources.
Directed by Vincent Carelli and Dominique Gallois.
In Waiãpi with English subtitles.
