A documentary that explores contemporary cultural, social and political questions at stake with indigenous populations in the Amazonian Rainforest will be shown at 5:30 p.m. in LaRose Digital Theatre.
Tuesday, April 21
“10th Parallel” screening and Q&A with director Silvio Da-Rin
5:30 p.m.
LaRose Digital Theatre (Koury Business Center)
Sponsored by the Department of World Languages and Cultures, Latin American Studies, International Studies, elondocs, and Elon College, the College of Arts & Sciences
“10th Parallel” explores the issue of isolated indigenous populations that live in a remote area by the border of Brazil and Peru. The documentary follows José Carlos Meirelles, a sertanista – one of the frontiersmen employed by FUNAI, the National Indian Foundation of Brazil – and the anthropologist Txai Terry de Aquino, as they both take a 300-mile river journey into the Ethno-Environmental Protection Front of the Envira River at the heart of the Amazonian Rainforest to work with the indigenous tribes. In this incredible voyage, they take us to a FUNAI outpost located at the foot of the 10th parallel south, where there is the largest indigenous isolated population of the world.
The film captures the hardships and frequently dangerous situations of taking this 21-day boat trip to the rainforest, as Meirelles and Terry de Aquino have to maintain the fragile relationship with the indigenous communities while dealing with traffickers and landowners in the area. For instance, Mereilles describes an encounter with one of these communities in which he was pierced through the face and the neck with arrows. At the same time, previous contacts and state policies related with these tribes had created disastrous results leading to the death of hundreds of thousands of indigenous people, and in some cases, the virtual enslavement of others on behalf of the government or industry. Since then, FUNAI has sought to maintain these tribes in isolation, and in doing so, its new policies have become a reference worldwide.
The director of the film, Silvio Da-Rin, has dedicated his life to the making of documentaries and the production of films and TV programs. He directed, among others, the short films O Principe do Fogo (The Beginning of Fire) (1984) and Hercules 56 (2006) and wrote a book on Brazilian documentaries: Espelho Partido (Broken Mirrow) (2004).
Da-Rin comes from Brazil to talk with his Elon audience about the global dilemmas related to isolated indigenous populations as well as the contemporary cultural, social and political questions that are at stake in the film.