This film screening event, curated by Danilo Barauna has been sponsored by The British Academy International Fellowship.
Access note: this screening includes sequences with flashing or strobing lights that may affect individuals with photosensitive epilepsy or other light-sensitive conditions. All films include English subtitles.
Content note: References to gender-based violence; blood.
This special screening will present moving image works by LGBTQIAPN+ visual artists from the Brazilian Amazon. It explores how the selected works create a network of affects that interfere with the process of creating a decolonial intimacy with the Amazon through queer performances that unfold along the waterside. The films use the borders and limits between water and land as a metaphor to examine local forms of labour and extractivism and their entanglement with human and non-human lives, queer and trans autobiographies by the water, and the affective and symbolic historical encounters between Black and Indigenous populations at the riverside. They also address gender-based violence in the Amazon, queer love stories in the Amazonian islands and shores, and the connections between literary content and video art traditions.
ARTISTS: Allyster Fagundes, Breno Filo, Danielle Fonseca, Keila-Sankofa, Mauricio Igor, Nay Jinknss, Rafa Bqueer, Rafael Matheus Moreira, Rafaela Correia, Ramon Reis.
See below for full programme and summary of the films that will be shown.
The event is free to attend. Please book a ticket here.
Dr Danilo Baraúna is a British Academy International Fellow at Newcastle University. His research lies at the intersection of Queer Studies (ecological, decolonial and affective approaches), Artists' Moving Image Theory and Criticism and Latin American Studies, with a particular interest in LGBTQIAPN+ art and cultural production from the Brazilian Amazon.
Instagram: @amazoniaecoqueer
This event is part of a wider public programme for Listening to the Voices of the Rivers. More information about the exhibition and other events can be found here.
All events are free to attend.
NCA is proud to operate as a free public gallery, providing open access to art and culture for everyone. As a Community Interest Company, we rely on the generosity of supporters like you to keep our doors open. If you value free cultural spaces, please consider making a donation. Your support helps us continue to inspire, educate, and connect our community—without barriers.
PROGRAMME
Viriandeua-Virianduba – Part II (2023), 10’, by Ramon Reis.
The Amazon is a polyphonic, sensorial, and disruptive territory shaped by the dialogue between nature and culture. Filmed in the Atlantic Amazon (Salinópolis, Pará), this work presents the performative body of Ramon Reis as he transmutes into mud from a mangrove, opening space to ancestral mobilities.
The Island of Self-contemplation (2020), 2’36”, by Allyster Fagundes, featuring Rafael Matheus Moreira.
In a world of playfulness, an enchanted being strives to reconstruct their hybrid body, fragile from a long-running identity struggle. When their identity emerges, the being discovers they are stranded on an island of rocks that functions as a metaphor for their battles. In that moment of revelation, a mysterious creature gives them comfort.
Idyllic Enchantments (2022), 3’20”, by Rafael Matheus Moreira, featuring Allyster Fagundes.
A reinterpretation of Brazilian mythology that centers LGBTQIAPN+ bodies within a popular imaginary. Two complementary beings move across different spatial dimensions through a mirror, seeking comfort within each other’s worlds.
Fever (2022), 6’, by Rafa Bqueer. Manaus (AM), produced during the artistic residency of the project ‘Casa Comum’
In this film, a green zentai mermaid travels along the rivers of the Amazon until she confronts the architecture that endangers their life. It offers a critical discussion about bodies, monuments, the Portuguese invasion, colonial wounds, and non-official representations of the Amazon.
The Head of Cabaças (2023), 6’, by Keila-Sankofa.
The apparition of the Head of Cabaças is a reimagination of the encounter between the Black and Indigenous populations in the Amazon. Most of Indigenous and Afro-diasporic cultures use the cuida/cuité/cabaça (gourd) for rituals, to make household items, masks, and ceremonial baths. Many ancient populations engage with the cabaças to tell the histories of the world’s creation. The black and Indigenous Amazonian traditions testify to these histories.
The Brega as Amazonian empowerment (2019),4’36”, by Nay Jinknss.
The Brega as Amazonian empowerment is a film that follows the inhabitants and workers of the Ver-o-Peso Market in their moments of leisure. These moments function as rituals of resistance that enable them to recover and sustain their ancestral identities.
When the Encantarias embrace Orum (2024), 5’, by Mauricio Igor.
A representation of the alliances between the encantados (spiritual beings) of Indigenous cosmovisions and sacred entities of Afro-diasporic cultures. The film presents a hybrid being that evokes a confluence of ways of living by the rivers of the Amazon through intertwined spiritual worlds.
Caipora (2019), 7’49”, by Rafaela Correia.
Emerging from a collaborative creative process, this film merges audiovisual experimentation with riverside cultures to tell the histories of Caipora, the rainforest’s protector, while discussing regional modes of living, violence against women, the recovery of local identities, and the relationships between human beings and the forest.
Resounds of an Island (2013), 4’22”, by Breno Filo.
A sentimental map of dynamic images captured in transit, between the center and the islands of Belém do Pará. Fragments of a mode of living that moves through friendship, love, and alliances with the islands’ landscape. An invitation to a small, necessary paradise.
To the Lighthouse (2009), 9’30”, by Danielle Fonseca.
How can a Virginia Woolf novel flow into the waters of the Pará River without losing its style and form? In what ways are the lighthouses and islands of distant continents similar? This film is set at the Espaldarte lighthouse on Mosqueiro Island.