Eskawata Kayawai - The Spirit of Transformation
Overview
*First feature looking for premiere* In the heart of the Amazon Rainforest, the Kaxinawá people (self-claimed Huni Kuin, "true people") are experiencing their cultural and spiritual rennaissance. After decades of slavery during the rubber plantation era, when they were captured in the forests with dogs, marked with numbers and forbidden to speak their language and live their culture. It took more than 20 years of hard work, prayers, and cultural strengthening undertaken by the spiritual leader Ninawá Pai da Mata so that his people could return to their ancestral way of life.
In this feature film, we are taken by the villagers to the cacophony of the forest, the beauty and the simplicity of everyday life, the enchantments of the forest medicines and the effort of what it takes for a tribe to rediscover themselves in communion with nature. Such powerful return home is an example for the world, especially in the critical moment in which we live, proving that it is possible to rescue ancestry and revolutionize everyday life to be in harmony with the planet. |
Director Biography - Lara Jacoski, Patrick Dequech Belem
Lara Jacoski and Patrick Belem are co-directors of Bem-te-vi Produções, a Brazilian independent film production. Living and working as pilgrim filmmakers since 2012 across the 5 continents, they focus in producing ethnographic documentary projects that register ancestral culture and alternative ways of perceiving the world. The duo creates multicultural projects that express an identity beyond language, showcasing the beauty and the simplicity of human culture and people living their truth. Since 2017 they have been deepening experiences with the native peoples in Brazil such as Guarani, Xavante, Kuikuro, Karajá and Huni Kuin, which they had produced their first feature film. |
Director Statement
"Eskawata Kayawai" (2016-2022 co-production USA and Norway - distribuition year 2023) is a 6 years study and life experience, which portrays the cultural rescue of a native land, a narrative by their own people. We live in a critical moment regarding the planet. A crisis that encompasses all relationships, from how we explore with nature and it's resources, how we relate to each other and even to ourselves. This project of 5 years of experience has transformed us as people and continues to transform wherever it goes, connecting beyond the mind, in the memory of our DNA, reviving our humanity.
There are 5 topics/values that are key for the time we are living in and the film has a possibility to open way for it.
(a) Value ancestral knowledge, valuing Mother Earth and ways of living in harmony with her.
(b) Value indigenous Brazilian culture and the Amazon, showing they are alive and their lives / knowledge matter.
(c) Ayahuasca as an ancestral healing tool as holistic therapy *Specially when we are able to make Q&A about this subject besides tackles on the decolonisation of Director Statement Download Images our minds and the need of sacredness in our life.
(d) Origins of Ayahuasca for the study of the psychedelics medicines, integrating and bridging worlds.
(e) Interest to get involved in such actions and/or projects that honour this ancestral knowledge
"Eskawata Kayawai" (2016-2022 co-production USA and Norway - distribuition year 2023) is a 6 years study and life experience, which portrays the cultural rescue of a native land, a narrative by their own people. We live in a critical moment regarding the planet. A crisis that encompasses all relationships, from how we explore with nature and it's resources, how we relate to each other and even to ourselves. This project of 5 years of experience has transformed us as people and continues to transform wherever it goes, connecting beyond the mind, in the memory of our DNA, reviving our humanity.
There are 5 topics/values that are key for the time we are living in and the film has a possibility to open way for it.
(a) Value ancestral knowledge, valuing Mother Earth and ways of living in harmony with her.
(b) Value indigenous Brazilian culture and the Amazon, showing they are alive and their lives / knowledge matter.
(c) Ayahuasca as an ancestral healing tool as holistic therapy *Specially when we are able to make Q&A about this subject besides tackles on the decolonisation of Director Statement Download Images our minds and the need of sacredness in our life.
(d) Origins of Ayahuasca for the study of the psychedelics medicines, integrating and bridging worlds.
(e) Interest to get involved in such actions and/or projects that honour this ancestral knowledge
Still Photos
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