Brazil Unfiltered: 'Ex-Shaman'
Line up: Luiz Bolognesi | 2018 | Brazil | 81’ | EN subtitles
Open: 20:30 - 22:00
Tickets: € 5 / or Cineville
Brazil Unfiltered comes back from 1 to 31 October with a special curation of documentary films to contextualise the presidential elections taking place in Brazil this month. Centred around territorial struggles and the frontlines of resistance, the programme starts with a masterpiece from the late Eduardo Coutinho, followed by a sequence of 3 films set in the Amazon and a closure event + screening about climate resilience and ecological farming.
Ex-Shaman is a non-romanticised portrait of the indigenous experience and resilience in contemporary times. Perpera lived in the forest without contact with white people until he was 20 years old. He was a powerful man of the Paiter Suruí people until contact with white men in 1969. Nowadays, illness is a risk for a community increasingly unable to isolate itself from the modernisation brought by white people and the power of the evangelical church.
After being accused by an evangelical pastor of being in league with the Devil, he is forced to become a doorman at the Evangelical church, renouncing his powers as a shaman. However, this mission, commanded by the intolerant pastor, is put to the test when someone from the village witnesses death firsthand, and the indigenous man's sensitivity to the spirits of the forest proves indispensable.