Lights on: gatherings, translations and agencies at the tela indígena film festival

Abstract

This article discusses the reception and agency of indigenous cinemas with indigenous and non-indigenous audiences. The narratives and analyzes described here are based on the authors’ experience of organizing a project about indigenous cinema and arts, the Mostra Tela Indígena, in the south of the country. In the four editions of this project, several indigenous films from Brazil and the Americas were exhibited for an audience composed of both non-indigenous and indigenous peoples. We will discuss indigenous cinemas and other artistic expressions in the aforementioned exhibition, treating these different cinemas as an agency that produces new contacts and meetings. The circulation of these movies and arts, together with their creators, shows how the cinema screen is a powerful space for the continuity of filmmaking, for encounters and the realization of a cosmocinepolitics. Our aim is to reflect about the spaces in which films circulate and how they create agency for new speeches, meetings and productions.