11 mins., b&w, sound (voice-over in Portuguese, extra-diegetic music)
Source : Museo do Índio, Rio de Janeiro. Can be viewed on-line here
Despite execrable music, a patronising voice-over and poor cinematography, this film also contains some interesting sequences of the life of the Kalapalo, one of the constellation of indigenous groups living on the upper Xingu river, Mato Grosso. At the time the film was made, the Kalapalo numbered around 200 and were in recovery from the devastating effects of epidemics of externally introduced disease.
The most notable sequence concerns an initiation ceremony, which involves dancing in the central plaza and the scraping of a child’s skin with a piranha jawbone to encourage strength and resistance. There are also some mostly distant shots of the playing of the ‘takwara’ paired flutes (see above) that later would become emblematic of the peoples of the Xingu region .
Right at the beginning of the film , there is an interesting aerial shot of one of the famously horse-shoe shaped villages of the Xavante, then still out of contact with Brazilian national society.
You must be logged in to post a comment.