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Paper short abstract:

As a set-ethnographer, I accompanied the making of an experimental documentary in Brazil. "Cinéma Popular"-filmmakers were asked to restage the novella "Schimmelreiter". Conversely, we - the foreign film team - were involved as actors. What is the decolonizing power of this collaboration?

Paper long abstract:

As a "set-ethnographer", I accompanied the filmmakers Philipp Hartmann and Danilo Carvalho in 2014 and 2017 to the desert-like landscape of northeastern Brazil, where they shot the experimental documentary VIRAR MAR (2020) about the "metaphorical potential of water that resonates in everyday life". Their experimental set-up for this was deliberately open to improvisation and detours. They made appointments with local actors, spent time with them, engaged in conversation and finally developed short scenes in the landscapes and architecture, at the reservoirs, water sources and canals of their surroundings.

For the presentation, I will focus on the encounter with brazilian filmmakers working with Josafá Ferreira Duarte, an important figure in the "Cinéma Popular" and a supporter of the "Movimento dos Sem Terra". Hartmann and Carvalho asked him to restage a Brazilian adaptation of the "Schimmelreiter" (Theodor Fontane). Conversely, they were involved as actors in two films by Duarte; as a 19th century water researcher and a corrupt padre.

For the panel I intend to explore this collaboration with the help of short video clips. The material should offer a cinematic resonance space for questions: Can concentrating on something foreign third, namely film, blur the post-colonial arrangment? To what extent are the conditions of film work, the spatial order of a film set, constitutive? What happens at its margins? What strength lies in joint narration and constant role reversal?