Have You Ever Seen a River Stop?

A Gente Rio [The People River], Carolina Caycedo (29 min), 2016.

A Gente Rio / We River considers the connections between sites of extractive and industrial infrastructure and environmental disasters in Brazil. The film focuses on four sites: the Itaipu Dam, the second-largest hydroelectric plant in the world, where the process of land expropriation became the catalyst for the emergence of the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST); the Belo Monte Dam on the Xingu River, where environmental licensing has been marked by a series of irregularities and profound indigenous resistance; the Bento Rodrigues Dam, which collapsed, releasing hazardous waste from the mining company Samarco and caused an unprecedented environmental disaster in Brazil; and, lastly, the Vale do Ribeira, where indigenous, caiçara and quilombola communities have been resisting against the construction of a dam. The artist highlights the accumulated knowledge of the communities, presenting a collective body resisting the extinction imposed by development-oriented projects.

A warning from the spirit of the forest to the intelligence of western civilisation, Equilíbrio is the second of two films by Tupinamba filmmaker, journalist and educator Olinda Muniz Wenderley with Kaapora as a protagonist. It tells of the destructive force of humanity from the perspective of an indigenous entity, Kaaproa, which is also the name of Muniz's life work: an environmental recovery centre for the protection of the ancestral land and spirituality in the Indigenous territory of the Caramuru Paraguaçu in Brazil (kaapora.eco.br). Equilíbrio follows on from Kaapora O Chamado das Matas, an etnomedia project filmed at the centre exploring through an experimental narrative the connection of the Indigenous People with the Earth and their Spirituality.