Paper short abstract:

Deceased in 1876 at the age of 46 the Baron of Juparanã maintained simultaneous relations with five African enslaved women. From these relations, 26 children were born. This film is based on their descendants' memories about violence, abuses, murders and suicides inside their family.

Paper long abstract:

In 300 years of slavery, approximately 10 million people forcibly migrated from Africa towards the Americas, in what was the largest transoceanic migration in history. Here I take seriously the proposal to overcome the “myth of the three races founders" as an invention of the dominant classes in Brazil, but which ended up producing real effects in Brazilian society, leaving no room for other possibilities, or even for other “myths”. During my fieldwork in the district of “Barão de Juparanã”, in the city of Valença - State of Rio de Janeiro, I used the audio-visual tool to give voice to other narratives, other founding myths. For the camera, these people were open to sharing their stories and the stories they heard from their ancestors. I think of films as artefacts since they are objectification composed of narratives, ideas, events, documents and photographs that substantiate certain events. Another important feature of the artefact is its usefulness. The use of film is not only important for my work as an anthropologist, but it works as a mirror that reflects at the same time it produces a reflection on the deep roots of violence in the Brazilian context. My fieldwork ended up focusing on women's narratives, not by my choice. There is also a predominance of narratives about the lives of women in the family. Thus, the videos expose through the stories told a kind of genealogy of violence against black women, but also a genealogy of resistance.