Screening of "Tupinambá – The Return of the Land", followed by Q&A with its director, Daniela Alarcon, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow on "Dispossessions in the Americas"

Bringing together testimonies from the Tupinambá, recorded in May 2014 in the Tupinambá de Olivença Indigenous Territory, in southern Bahia (Brazil), and archival images, this documentary presents the struggle of the Tupinambá to recover their land. They have been waiting for official territorial recognition since 2004.

For the past decades, they have mobilised collectively to recover their lands in what are known as retomadas de terras. This strategy has allowed them to recover considerable portions of their territory, previously expropriated by non-Indians. However, this has led to their criminalization and to violent attacks – perpetrated by the Brazilian state and by individuals and groups opposed to their rights, in spite of these being recognized by the Brazilian Constitution.

Told from the Tupinambá perspective, the film shows the history of their dispossession and resistance – which is inextricably linked to the advance of the agricultural frontier at the end of the 19th century, the rise of the cocoa colonels and the recognition of Indigenous territorial rights by Brazil’s 1988 Constitution. For the Tupinambá, the land belongs to the most important entities of their cosmology, the encantados.

Brazil, 2015, 24’57 | Documentary film. Subtitled in English | Direction: Daniela Alarcon | Research and screenplay: Daniela Alarcon | Edition: Fernanda Ligabue | Photography: Fernanda Ligabue | Additional photography: Thiago Dezan and Paula Daibert | Colour grading: Fernanda Ligabue | Sound: Fernanda Ligabue | Original soundtrack: Bruno Prado and Daniel Carezzato | Audio mixing and mastering: Bruno Prado and Daniel Carezzato | Graphic design: Marina Kanzian | Produced by Repórter Brasil | Accomplished through crowdfunding.