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“ETHNOCIDE IS NOT THE PHYSICAL DESTRUCTION
OF MEN, BUT THE DESTRUCTION OF THEIR MODES OF LIFE
AND THOUGHT”
written and directed by Luiz Bolognesiproduced by Buriti Filmes and Gullane
brazil • portuguese/tupí monde • 2018 • 82 min
international salesUpside Distribution · Antoine Bertrand-Hardy | +33 6 43 48 00 [email protected]· Estelle De Araujo | +33 6 84 17 49 [email protected]· Johan De Faria | +33 6 71 93 34 [email protected]
international pressAnywaysFlorence [email protected] | +33 6 31 87 17 54
production companiesBuriti Filmes, São Paulo, [email protected] | +55 11 36240794Gullane, São Paolo, [email protected] | +55 11 50840996
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The uncontacted tribe from Amazônia ‘Paiter Surui’ has been encroached by modernity since its first contact with the white man in 1969. Smartphones, electricity, gas tanks, guns, and Facebook replace traditional forms of life. In the midst of this new
world, an ex-shaman who was forced into evangelical Christianity struggles to cure the suffering people of his village, and faces the wrath of spirits of the forest, who are upset he has abandoned them.
SYNOPSIS
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The Paiter Suruí went through most of 20th century isolated from the rest of the world. Perpera, our protagonist, was 20 years old when his people made first contact with the white man in 1969. Until that moment, Perpera was a powerful shaman, a carrier of the ancestral knowledge of his people. But, with the white man came evangelical missionaries; they brought the word of a new god, and claimed that shamanism was of the devil. Perpera was forced to abandon his ancestral practices. The Ex-Shaman knows that the spirits of the forests are upset. He has stopped praying to
them and playing his sacred instruments. Afraid, Perpera sleeps with the lights on, “before they would consult the shaman, now they just take aspirin,” he says. However, this new scenario is at odds with the nature and culture of the Suruí village. Soon enough, events put into question the new dynamics of power among the Suruí people. When death haunts the Paiter Suruí, the power to speak to the spirits again becomes necessary, and the spirits do not speak to common people.
LONG SYNOPSIS
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DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
“The film portrays the Brazilian indigenous experience of today from the inside out. It keeps far away from romantic clichés. It dives into the daily lives of a tribe of around one thousand people which still speak the Paiter Suruí language and until 1969 still lived isolated in the forest. The main character is a 60-year-old Paiter Suruí native who was chosen and trained as a shaman. After coming into contact with the white man, an Evangelical pastor began preaching
to the natives that the shaman’s knowledge originated from the Devil, destroying the cultural and spiritual foundations of the entire tribe. The concept was to work on the border between documentary and fiction. The actors play themselves and portray their real stories. It becomes hard to identify the fine line where the fiction begins and the documentary ends and vice versa.” luiz bolognesi
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LUIZ BOLOGNESIDIRECTOR AND SCREENWRITER
BIOGRAPHY
Luiz Bolognesi was born in São Paulo, Brazil in 1966. “Ex-Shaman” is Luiz’s second feature as a director. The first was the animated film “Rio 2096, a Story of Love and Fury” which was the winner of the Cristal Award of Best Picture at the Annecy Animated Film Festival in 2013. He is also an award-winning screenwriter, responsible for the script of “Bicho de Sete Cabeças” (Brainstorm), Locarno and Toronto 2001; “Chega de Saudade” (The Ballroom – 2007), awarded Best Screenplay by the Brazilian Film Academy, the Recife film festival, and APCA (São Paulo Art Critics Association); “Birdwatchers” (La Terra degli Uomini Rossi), in Competition at Venice 2008; “As Melhores Coisas do Mundo” (The Best Things in the World – 2010), Rome IFF and awarded Best Screenplay at Recife FF and “Amazonia 3D”, closing film at Venice 2014. In 2015 he wrote the screenplays for “Elis”, released in 2016. His most recent project were the screenplays for “Como Nossos Pais” (Just Like Our Parents), which premiered Berlin Panorama 2017 and “Bingo, o Rei das Manhãs” (Bingo, the King of The Mornings) – the official selection of Brasil for the 90th Academy awards.
SELECTED FILMOGRAPHY
Director2017 Ex-Pajé · Ex-Shaman | Panorama, Berlin 20182013 Uma História de Amor e Fúria Rio 2096, a Story of Love and Fury | Best Film at Annency 2013
Screenwriter 2017 Bingo: O Rei das Manhãs · Bingo2017 Como Nossos Pais · Just Like Our Parents2015 Elis · Eliz 2014 Amazonia Desconhecida · Amazonia 3D2013 Uma História de Amor e Fúria Rio 2096, a Story of Love and Fury 2010 As Melhores Coisas do Mundo The Best Things in the World2008 Terra Vermelha · Birdwatchers2007 O Mundo Em Duas Voltas The World in Two Round Trips2007 Chega de Saudade · The Ballroom2001 Bicho de Sete Cabeças · Brainstorm
Director television2016 Juventude Conectada · Youth Connected2014 Educação.doc · Education.doc2010 Lutas.doc · To Fight.doc2002 A Guerra dos Paulistas · São Paulo’s War1999 Cine Mambembe, O Cinema Descobre o Brasil Cine Mambembe, Cinema Discovers The Brazil
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GENERAL The indigenous territory where the Paiter Surui live is a space marked by conflict. In this part of the Amazonian state of Rondônia, native indigenous peoples must constantly deal with extractive forces which invade their territory in search of wood, gold and diamonds. Alongside the environmental destruction of the Amazonian forest there is another threat: the incursion of evangelical missionaries into indigenous communities. The demonization of the shaman threatens the structural balance of these communities. It takes away a figure that is not only central to cultural identity, but also to matters of health. In communities where shamanism plays a key role, health, disease and death are understood through the supernatural. For this reason, shamans, even when they are forced to abandon their practices, often maintain their status and title. While the struggle of the Paiter Suruí has many similarities to those of other indigenous groups through the Amazon, it also has certain particularities. The reality of Rondônia, birthplace of the Tupi civilization, is, in the words of Felipe Milanez, environmentalist and professor at the Universidade do Recôncavo (BA), something like a “bang-bang”. In 2016, 21 people died in agrarian conflicts in Rondônia, making it the state with the highest incidence of agrarian violence in Brazil. At the same time, woodcutting, hydroelectric and mining concessions have also made it the state with the highest incidence of deforestation in all the Amazon. The two major threats to indigenous life, extractors and the evangelical church, are directly related. “The conquest of those souls opens these communities up to consumerism and exploitation,” Milanez explains. “The great strength of indigenous
communities exists in the collective. Evangelism, by promoting individualism, the notion of property, and the traditional, western family structure, disarticulates other forms of organization, and lessens the power of resistance of these communities.”
1500’s As explained by indigenous leader Ailton Krenak, indigenous communities in Brazil have been threatened by Christianity since the arrival of the Portuguese in the 1500’s. There is even an iconic image of that early process of colonization and forced conversion, the painting Primeira Missa do Brasil by Victor Meirelles. In the image, a cross takes the central stage while a group of indigenous people watch passively as history unfolds around them.
1945 Until the end of the XIX century, the main missionary groups in the Amazon were catholic, but since the end of WWII Evangelical pastors have arrived in large numbers, many of them from the United States and Europe. “There was that old maxim, if the Indian runs from the cross, he falls on the sword,” says Krenak, recounting the methods of the past. “But nowadays we deal with a new reality: the presence of evangelical fundamentalists. They preach that shamanism and other ancestral practices are barbarous. They are bullying other religions and creating a crisis without precedent in our communities.”
1950’s–1960’s The presence and threat of the white man in Paiter territory dates to the turn of 20th century, when rubber extraction brought a migratory wave to the state of Rondônia. The arrival of the migrants
HISTORICALCONTEXT
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had a direct impact over indigenous populations and the ecological balance of the area. With agricultural expansion during the 1950´s and 60´s, migration rised, and with it came increasingly hostile and explosive land disputes. The first encroachments in Paiter Surui were met with arrows, forcing the invaders to run.
1969 However, in 1969, after many attacks by rubber extractors and foremen, the Paiter Suruí accepted contact and abandoned their isolation. It was the beginning of a tragedy. Through contact with the white man came evangelization and disease. In just the first few years after contact, as many as 300 Paiter Suruí died by flu and measles.
1980’s Starting in the 1980’s however, young Paiters familiar with Portuguese started to organize
alongside other social movements in defense of the forests, and began to make demarcations of land to be protected as their own. 2016 While the struggle of the Paiter Suruí has many similarities to those of other indigenous groups through the Amazon, it also has certain particularities. The reality of Rondônia, birthplace of the Tupi civilization, is, in the words of Felipe Milanez, environmentalist and professor at the Universidade do Recôncavo (BA), something like a “bang-bang”. In 2016, 21 people died in agrarian conflicts in Rondônia, making it the state with the highest incidence of agrarian violence in Brazil. At the same time, woodcutting, hydroelectric and mining concessions have also made it the state with the highest incidence of deforestation in all of the Brazilian Amazon.
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Indigenous people have been protagonists in other works of yours, like Terra Vermelha and Uma História de Amore e Fúria. How is this documentary related with your personal trajectory?
lb. I studied anthropology for five years, and was professor at a community frequented by Pataxós in the south of Bahia. I got very close to the Guarani Kaiowá to make Terra Vermelha and I also have had contact with the Kraó. Uma Historia de Amor e Fúria is a film that shows Brazilian History from the perspective of Tupinamba mythology. When I decided to start this film, my initial impulse was to understand the knowledge of the wise men of the native communities, the shamans. Because their histories are oral and not written, the shaman alone keeps an entire village’s knowledge. A shaman has a religious role, but also a scientific one. Indigenous cosmology does not separate religion and science. Initially my project was to interview shamans and register that perspective that our civilization lost. Around three years ago, I was in Rondônia making a documentary series [Juventude Conectada] about young people who change the world through the internet. I had chosen to work with that group of young people in Paiter Suruí because, through cellphones, they had started to denounce the presence of illegal loggers in indigenous territories. They took photos and marked with GPS wherever loggers were seen and published that information online for NGO’s to put pressure on the federal police to do something about it. I asked them:
“don’t you have a shaman here?” They told me that yes, and introduced me to Perpera. He was presented to me as “ex-shaman”. It was in that first contact with Perpera that I became impassioned. I understood the urgency of telling this story.
What was that first meeting like?lb. While he said, he was no longer a shaman, he also told me that at night he could only sleep with the lights on because the spirits of the forest were upset with him. If he was in the dark, the spirits would beat him. At that moment, I thought: He never stopped being a Shaman. He was living in a new way. Though he was forced by the evangelical church to renounce his shamanism, he still saw the world with magical eyes. We spoke for an entire afternoon under a tree – I do not know how, since he doesn’t speak Portuguese and I don’t speak Paiter Suruí either. From then on, I came to understand that Perpera’s story was more urgent than my original project. The conflict of Perpera showcases a very difficult battle that indigenous communities are facing currently against evangelical missions that enter their villages and demonize their cultures. When you say that what the shaman does belongs to the devil, you are killing a cosmology.
How did you transform that into cinema? Because the film is about a societal tragedy, and yet keeps its focus on an intimate story.
lb. I wanted to portray this epic conflict, which encapsulates 500 years of the history of Brazil, since the arrival of the Jesuits, from the inside out. I wanted to explore this tragedy from a lyrical perspective, from the point of view of people that are living this conflict intimately. Perpera did not abandon shamanism because he wanted to: he was forced to do so, and he felt a violence had been done to him. Despite working previously as a screenwriter, I didn’t want to come into this project with a script ready. I had an outline, but the dramaturgy was built on a day by day basis, with the help of all those involved. At night, I would decide what to shoot the next day.
INTERVIEWWITH THE DIRECTOR
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The film, on top of being a documentary, has some scenes which are constructed. Were those fictionalized sections also constructed with the film’s real characters?
lb. Yes. Throughout the process, I understood that what I was doing was Direct Cinema. I think my movie inserts itself in the tradition of a cinema that is on the border between documentary and fiction, a cinema where the actors are their own characters. That kind of cinema works as a profound meeting between subject and object: it brakes barriers, you put yourself in the other’s place. The only thing that I knew for sure when I started was that I wanted to write and compose the drama with them, and that I had to work with a small team. We were only 5 people.
Did you work with a small team to not be invasive, or was there also an aesthetic consideration?
lb. Our aesthetic concern was always tied to an ethical and ideological pursuit. I wanted to be close to the Paiter and to my characters. As I said before, I wanted to make a movie from the inside
out, not a personal treatment. For that, I had to go with a very minimal crew. Our photographer [Pedro Márquez] carried that camera alone, worked with a limited number of lenses and without lighting equipment. Our camera and sound equipment were the best we could get, and our team was amazing, but everything was broken down to its most essential element. Only the essential, but with quality. We did cinemascope, no? Our concern with the film’s aesthetic quality wasn’t a question of narcissistic vanity. After watching many documentaries about indigenous people, many of which I like a lot, I noticed a lot of them have a kind of precarious aesthetic, which is linked to a very real sense of urgency. However, with this style, the sophisticated wisdom and way of life of these peoples are not translated to images. I think that the ’precarious aesthetic’ makes it difficult for people to appreciate the greatness of these communities. I wanted to use the poetry of cinema to try and capture the beauty and power of these communities. We shot what was happening, what was right in front of our faces, but without the camera moving frenetically from one side to the
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other, without this sense of urgency. All the time we wondered: where is the beauty of this event?
That translates itself onto screen, among other things, as a movie marked by a different temporality…
lb. We sought poetic timing. The only way to shoot magic is by being capturing it poetically. During the four weeks of shooting we tried to experience everything, from working to eating, in their reality. Our team soon understood that we would only be able to capture what was happening if we respected the magic we had around us.
How did you explain the film to the village?lb. I approached Perpera and the leaders of Paiter and said: “I want to make a film about you. I don’t know what it will be. We will build the film together.” I told Perpera that I wanted to film his day to day because a Shaman is an important and central figure in the life of the Paiter Suruí and, some time ago, he had that importance. The evangelical church was there and was shot with respect; we did not want to make a value judgement. In the 1980s and 90s, some evangelical indigenous people led by a pastor set fire to prayer houses and threatened shamans, telling them that they were bringing disease by practicing diabolical
rituals. Regardless of that history, we shot the church with respect. Perpera’s own parents are evangelicals. We were shooting their village, their lives. In practice, how did you capture the day to
day scenes, including labor and the struggle for the land?
lb. They did not understand fiction as fiction. For them, everything was in the field of truth. Perpera did what he usually did. When we shot him buying margarine in the supermarket scene, he would pay the cashier. He always found it strange, and would become a bit impatient, if we ever had to shoot something more than once. Most of the shots were done in one take just because of that: he didn’t like to do a second take. There’s a phenomenon, described by a French anthropologist in an 800 page thesis, that is called the insolence of the shamans. Shamans are educated that way. Our shaman lived 20 years without contact with the whites. He is a sui genesis human being: one of the few people on the planet that lived the fullness of indigenous life before contact. His infancy, adolescence, and the first years of his adult life where lived completely independent of the white man. He lived that life in the jungle. He was the young shaman of a group of around 500 people.
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To be a shaman is to live differently. The shaman of Paiter Suruí could not plant or hunt the food that they ate, nor could they plant the tobacco and herbs which were smoked in rituals. The shaman received food and tobacco from everyone in the village. They would bring the best things to him. Perpera, our shaman, had forgotten what that felt like, but through the film he went back to being a central figure. Suddenly, I had a movie star in front of me [laughs]. Through the film, we awoke the ’shaman’s insolence’ once more. He still is and always has been a Shaman. The pastors tried to destroy him, and in certain sense they did it. The community
stopped sending food, tobacco, and food to him. They even began to ignore him. But, even today, whenever a family has a situation for which science and medicine do not have a solution, they call the shaman in secret. There they ask themselves: “Could it be that I am talking to the devil? But before he wasn’t a devil.” That is the conflict that they live. But that conflict is not expressed explicitly, because indigenous communities like this one do not verbalize things in this manner. Their dialogue is not Socratic. The most profound conflict is there subtly: the conflict of identity.
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PERPERA, THE EX SHAMAN As a young boy, Perpera experienced magical dreams while suffering from an intense bowl disease that left him near death. When the Paiter’s shaman found out about these dreams, he had no doubt that Perpera was an uãuã – a shaman in the language of the Paiter Suruí. After that experience, Perpera went on to spend months isolated in the jungle. Among the Paiter Suruí, the lessons from one spiritual leader to the next are not passed on by word of mouth, but by the spirits of the forest. During his isolation, Perpera received the spirits, their songs, and their knowledge. It was through the spirits that Perpera learned shamanism. “The spirits would seek the shaman in the village, in the river … they made the shaman go to the river and asked him
if he wanted fish,” Perpera explains in the film. When the evangelical church arrived, Perpera had to suspend that connection: “It was not possible to go back to being a shaman after the preacher said that shamanism was of the devil. Nobody spoke to me, they ignored me.” However, he has not abandoned shamanism altogether. Whenever the medicine brought by the white man fails, the ex-shaman is sought out. Because Perpera was born before the contact of the Paiter Suruí with the white man, no one knows his age. The younger people of the village think he is around 70 years old, perhaps older.
MAIN PROTAGONISTS
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BIRA, YOUNG LEADER Ubiratan Suruí, o Bira, left his native village to live in the city of Cacoal, Rondônia, in his teenage years. “I had to finish my studies, and I couldn’t do it there,” explains Bira, who graduated in Social Sciences from the Federal University of Rondonia. Today, at 25 years old, Bira does communications for the Matereila Association, a group that works for the defense and preservation of the Suruí peoples’ material and cultural heritage. He is married and has one child. The young Suruí participates in various community councils and lectures “I believe it is important that I have the most participation possible in everything that can help in the politics of the defense of our people,” he says. One of the tools that Bira uses most effectively is the internet.
“With technology, I can contribute to maintain the jungle and our culture alive. Through Google, the world can know the reality and the fight of our people in the middle of the amazon.”
KABENA CINTA LARGA, ARTISAN Kabena is a Cinta Larga, a community which lives in a village neighboring the Paiter Suruí. When she was young, she met the Suruí man she would marry. Though she lives among the Suruí, she speaks two languages – Suruí and Cinta Larga, both from the Tupi-Mondé root. Kabena is Bira’s mother, and has two other children. On top of fieldwork, where she grows corn, maize and cassava for subsistence, she is also a gifted artisan. The tucumã necklace made by her is considered one of the most perfect in the whole region, and she also makes bracelets, rings, earrings, and seed necklaces. She has always taught her children that, wherever they are, they must have affection for their elders and must respect their fellow men.
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PRODUCTION COMPANIES PROFILES
Buriti Filmes Founded in 1997 in São Paulo - Brazil, BURITI FILMES is a television and film production company, led by the filmmakers Laís Bodanzky and Luiz Bolognesi. Buriti produced the films Just Like our Parents, A Story of Love and Fury, The Best Things in the World, The Ballroom, Brainstorm, Cine Mambembe, São Paulo’s war, To fight.doc, Olympic Women, Stop Look Listen and Education.doc. Buriti has won over 120 national and international awards. Their films have been exhibited in movie theaters all over the world and sold for television in over 30 countries, including the Canal Plus in Spain and France, TV Arté in France and Germany, RAI in Italy, HBO in Latin America and TV Globo, ESPN, Globo News, Netflix and TVs Brasil, Arte 1, Canal Futura and Curta! in Brazil. Currently, Buriti is developing the feature length animated film Viajantes do Bosque Encantado, the film Pedro, and a TV series, Guerras do Brasil.doc. Recently, Buriti celebrated the international premiere of Just Like our Parents, and is currently preparing for the launch of the documentary Ex Shaman, slated for the 1st semester of 2018.
Gullane Gullane was founded in 1996 by brothers Caio Gullane and Fabiano Gullane and is one of today’s best known and acclaimed Brazilian production companies, having produced over 40 feature films and more than 15 television series. Its productions have been screened at the most prestigious festivals around the world, winning more than 200 awards, as well as being distributed in many countries around the world. The company’s trademark is a focus on international co-productions. Among the company’s most highlighted productions are Just Like Our Parents by Laís Bodanzky, Berlinale Panorama Special 2017, The Second Mother, by Anna Muylaert, Brazilian Entry for the Oscar 2016, Audience Award at Berlin Film Festival – Panorama and Best Actress at Sundance Film Festival in 2015; The Violin Teacher, by Sérgio Machado, Closing Film in Piazza Grande at Locarno in 2015; A Wolf at the Door, by Fernando Coimbra, Best Film at San Sebastian – Horizontes Latinos and Miami in 2013 and Official Selection at Toronto; Amazonia 3D, co-production with France by Thierry Ragobert, Closing Film at Venice and Official Selection at Toronto in 2013; Rio 2096, a Story of Love and Fury, by Luiz Bolognesi, Best Film at Annecy in 2013; Tabu, co-production with Portugal, Germany and France, by Miguel Gomes, Competition at Berlin in 2012; Plastic City, co-production with China/Hong Kong by Yu Likwai, Competition at Venice Film Festival in 2008; Birdwatchers, coproduction with Italy by Marco Bechis, Competition at Venice Film Festival 2008; The Year My Parents Went On Vacation, by Cao Hamburger, Competition at Berlin Film Festival in 2007 and Oscar Short List; Carandiru, by Hector Babenco, Competition at Cannes Film Festival in 2003; Brainstorm, by Laís Bodanzky, Official Selection at Toronto and Locarno in 2001. Gullane also produced the trilogy Till Luck do us Part, the top Brazilian box office hits in 2012, 2014 and 2016.
PRODUCTION
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STATEMENT FROM THE PRODUCERS
“The most moving element of this cinema/reality, which Luiz Bolognesi captures with all the consideration and respect that the subject requires, is the transformation of us, the audience, into witnesses of the last minutes of a culture that is thousands of years old and full of wisdom. It is a culture never registered in the history books, or passed on to new generations. It is on its last breaths.” laís bodanzky
“Since the beginning of his career as a screenwriter and director, Luiz Bolognesi always saw his work as an opportunity to create conscience for important causes and for the plight of minorities, especially
the sufferings of the indigenous populations of Brazil and the Americas. Starting with Birdwatchers, directed by Marco Bechis and written by Luiz, followed by Amazonia 3D, directed by Thierry Ragobert, and his Luiz’s directorial debut, Rio 2096: A story of love and fury, which won the Annecy film festival in 2013 and narrates the history of Brasil from the point of view of the losers, not the victors, Bolognesi has always focused on the narratives of the oppressed and less fortunate. Caio and I are very proud and motivated to work alongside Luiz. We will continue working together to make cinema that is a tool for a more just and conscientious world, and hopefully a better future as well.” fabiano gullane & caio gullane
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MAIN CREWMAIN CAST
Perpera SuruíKabena Cinta LargaAgamenon SuruíKennedy Suruí (Caciquinho)Ubiratan Suruí (Bira)Mopidmore Surui (Rone)Arildo Gapamé Surui
written and directed by Luiz Bolognesidirector of photography Pedro J. Márquezeditor Ricardo Fariassound Rodrigo Macedosound designArmando Torres Jr., ABCCaio GuerinManon Ribatassistant photographer Alessandro Valese (Alemão)colorist Luisa Cavanaghassistant director Carolina Fernandespostproduction supervisor Patrícia Nellyproduction coordinator Flávia Tonaleziinternational coordinator Manuela Mandlermarketing Dannielle Alarcón executive coordinator Andréa Marcondes executive producersLaís BodanzkyLuiz Bolognesiproduced by Laís BodanzkyLuiz BolognesiCaio GullaneFabiano Gullanea Buriti Filmes and Gullane production
international sales Upside Distribution.
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