For the third meeting of Cinema Permanente, Brazilian artist and filmmaker Ana Vaz will present two works that address at the same time the issue of the destruction of ecosystems and the genocide, both physical and cultural, of the indigenous communities of the Amazon perpetrated by the government. The documentaristic aim of saving the environmental and collective memory from the epistemicide of the military dictatorship is flanked by the political commitment, which the archives, drawings, mountain erosion and cave paintings represent the first pulses of resistance.
The double screening will be introduced by a lecture by Portuguese curator and researcher Margarida Mendes, engaged in interdisciplinary research on material changes, extractivism and their reflection on social structures and cultural production, in relation to Ana Vaz's work. A conversation between the two will follow.

The films will be displayed in Capriccio until March 14th.

Apiyemiyekî?
(Brazil / France / Netherlands / Portugal)
16mm transferred to 2K, sound, 27', color and black white, 2019
commissioned for the survey exhibition:"Meta-Archive 1964-1985: Space for Listening and Reading on the Histories of the Military Dictatorship in Brazil"(SESC-Belenzinho, São Paulo, Brazil)
co-produced by: Spectre Productions, Stenar Projects and Ana Vaz.

The film is a cinematographic portrait that departs from Brazilian educator and indigenous rights militant Egydio Schwade's archive — Casa da Cultura de Urubuí — found in his home at Presidente Figueiredo (Amazonas), where over 3.000 drawings made by the Waimiri-Atroari, a people native to the Brazilian Amazon, during their first literacy process are currently kept.
The drawings document and construct a collective visual memory from their learning process, perspective and territory while attesting to a series of violent attacks they were submitted to during the Military Dictatorship in Brazil.

Olhe Bem as Montanhas
16mm transfered to 2K, 30', 5.1 sound, 2018
commissioned by: Le Conseil Régional des Hauts-de-France, Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa of Minas Gerais, The Federal
Estate of Minas Gerais (Brazil), The International Relations Service of the University of Lille, Le Fresnoy Studio National des Arts Contemporains

“Look closely at the mountains!”: the phrase was coined by the artist Manfredo de Souzanetto during Brazil’s years of dictatorship. Mining activities were destroying the environment in the State of Minas Gerais in the South-West of the country. Through editing, Ana Vaz draws parallels between this region and the very distant Nord-Pas-de-Calais in northern France, also marked by over three centuries of mining. On one side, eroded mountains plague its inhabitants with deadly landslides. Hollow and gutted, these mountains become
the receptacles of a ghostly memory. On the other side, in France, mining waste stacks become mountains and reservoirs of biodiversity, where the frontier between nature and technology is now indiscernible. The filmmaker surprises us with each shot. Poetry takes precedence over any activist or environmental discourse – as in the sequence showing scientists measuring bats in the moonlight. Here, “look closely” steers the film towards details, towards visual and sound materials. Yet, these are never disconnected from the political: a
shot of the sky taken from the bottom of a ravine is enough to conjure up the ghosts of eradicated indigenous peoples, whose cave paintings nonetheless continue to exist. (Charlotte Garson, Cinéma du Réel)

Cinema Permanente is a long-term project involving the alternation of artists' films that will be screened over a month in a specially equipped cinema hall.
The programme features films documenting experiences of ecological activism from below or investigating the relationship between artistic and environmental practices, alternating between documentaries and fiction.

info and reservation: far@fondazioneratti.org