Mokõi Kovoe: behind the scenes of the Cultural Association of Indigenous Filmmakers (Ascuri)

Abstract

This article describes, in words and images, the process of making the film "Mokõi Kovoe", a production of the Cultural Association of Indigenous Filmmakers (Ascuri) developed in communities of the Kaiowá people. This is a brief history of how the myth of the origin of the sacred bird Kovoe traveled through different times, media, graphics, and languages, until it was expressed in cinema. The story is structured around two axes: first, the communitarian character of this filmmaking process, providing an experience of retaking the teko joja (harmonious way of being), and second, the relationship between this process and the yvy rendy (spiritual world), with the ñanderu and ñandesy (prayer leaders, shamans, spiritual leaders) as the main guides and agents of this relationship. Immersed in a cosmological landscape in which different worlds are connected by different languages, the images and sounds of Ascuri's cinema - as well as the body-objects that produce and store them - are also integrated as active elements in this field of mediations.