Orlando Villas Boas

The creation of the Xingu Indigenous Park is reassessed by indigenous peoples and anthropologists. Almost 50 years after the initiative, which had the decisive participation of the indigenist brothers Cláudio and Orlando Villas-Bôas, the older indigenous people still have not forgotten the original lands they left behind. Some want to go back to their old origins.

Directed by the photographer Maureen Bisilliat, the documentary portraits the everyday life in the indigenous village of Mehinaku, in Alto Xingu, showing the planting and harvest of cassava, the fishing, the preparation of the annatto ink, the modeling of the domestic ceramics, the division of tasks between men and women, the work at the collective land, the relationship between parents and children, the marriage ceremony, the exchange with other villages and the great celebration of the Yamuricumã party.

The surviving 14 minutes of the original documentary about the Villas Boas expedition to the Amazonian tribes in Brazil.

The fading of composer Zé Keti’s career. The sad portrait of Brazilian Congress closed in 1977. The pain of a mother who lost her 15-year old daughter run over by a car. The Brazilian Presidents since Castelo Branco. Characters and settings registered through the keen and sensitive perspective of photographer Orlando Brito, in a career spanning 50 years as a professional. From the political sidelines to the lives of Brazilians from the interior, Brito recalls experiences and discusses the role of the photographer and the pain of registering someone’s grief.