​​​Beyond Property: Imagining with the Earth

A terra chama chama a terra

Directed by Raquel Versieux and Roberto Freitas (Brazil, 30 Min., 2023)

The peasant community “Caldeirão da Santa Cruz do Deserto” once sheltered 5,000 people living in self-sufficiency and food sovereignty in the city of Crato, Brazil. It was violently massacred by the Brazilian State’s military forces in 1937. This event remains largely unclarified in the nation’s history, and its memory is the thread intertwining the voices of women living on and with the land in this region. Dona Ana, a member of the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST), and Silvanete Lermen, a healer and farmer cultivating ten hectares of agroforestry in the semi-arid region, weave together a film about women, faith, land conflicts, water, bodies, poetry, knowledge, memory, and possible collectivities. Do you hear the earth calling us? 

Quilombo, Continuum

Directed by Juliana Streva (Brazil, 22:49, 2023)

Inspired by the poetics and politics of Beatriz Nascimento, Quilombo, Continuum traces the living pulse of quilombo as memory, movement, and worldmaking. Through a spiral temporality, the film journeys across the reactivation of quilombo legacies in the territory now called Brazil, where past and present fold into one another. Weaving the voices of Amefrican thinkers, artists, and activists, it listens to the Black Radical Tradition as it reimagines territory across time and space. Against the enduring myth of racial democracy, Quilombo, Continuum emerges as a counter-archive, an act of cinematic remembrance and reimagination of quilombo praxis today. 

Mãri hi – Der Baum der Träume

Directed by Morzaniel Ɨramari (Brazil, 17 Min., 2023)

After the creator planted the seeds of the dream tree, the tree grew, the flowers blossomed, and the forest dwellers began to dream. Even the dogs started to dream. Guided by the voice of Indigenous leader and great shaman Davi Kopenawa Yanomami, this hypnotic film guides us through the dreams of the Yanomami people. As the camera drifts through the Amazon rainforest, we come to understand their appreciation of the power of dreams. Filmmaker Morzaniel Ɨramari captures the everyday life and rituals of his community and uses cinema to bring us closer to the spirit realm. It’s an invitation to reflect, to dream so that we may become more awake.

Image Credit: Screenshot from Chama Terra Terra Chama