Moving Images and weaving networks in the Xingu Indigenous Territory

Abstract

In search of apprehending the dynamics of image production and circulation among Xinguano people, I traveled through different regions of the Xingu River basin, witnessing various situations in which audiovisual production assumes a central position in the villages - thus crossing borders conventionally underpinned by the region’s ethnology. In this trajectory, Upper, Middle and Lower Xingu were entangled in a weave sewn by various ways of making, thinking, watching and circulating films. The present reflection is constituted by an effort to weave a heterogeneous set of observations that result from a series of incursions to some of the peoples that today integrate the Xingu Indigenous Territory (TIX). In this essay, I seek to delineate the contours of an imagetic circuit that is configured between the different Xinguano villages and that, I suggest, generates effects on the establishment of relations, as well as on the crossing and redefinition of borders, between the peoples of the TIX. Based on my field observations, I propose that the regional Xinguano network is nowadays "tied", not only by commercial exchanges, marriages, accusations of witchcraft and joint political experiences, but also by a shared experience of using video.