Orí y las voces de la diáspora: feminismo negro, identidad y film ensayo

• In Event: Screening intercultural landscapes in Latin American moving-images: displacements and identities

Abstract

In 1989, the Jewish-Brazilian filmmaker Raquel Gerber released Orí, a documentary made between 1977 and 1988, resulting in 11 years of registering Brazilian Black social movements. During this long interval, the film testified important historical facts directly linked to the Black population’s interests. The long shooting period, together with the interest of filming people and cultural, political and academic events in Brazil and in some African countries, resulted in a kaleidoscopic text. Far from offering a linear treatment of African-Brazilian culture, we see a multifaceted approach in its defense of a transnational culture, which is defined by its narrator, Beatriz Nascimento, as a “Transatlantic Civilization”. Apart from her role as narrator, Beatriz is also co-author of the film. As a poet and, mainly, an intellectual interested in questions of memory, territory and gender related to the Black people, her voice and thoughts cross the film. In the documentary, images of mobility work as discursive tropes by activating a radical rupture in dealing with identity issues.

Author

• Gilberto A Sobrinho, Universidade Estadual de Campinas