Accepted Paper:

Anthropology and the cinematic language of the bodies in trance at rituals with ayahuasca in Brazilian's urban shamanism  
Carolina Abreu (UNESP)

Paper short abstract:

Intending to research the knowledge embodiment and the ways to deal with forms of communication with the world that are given by the transe of ayahuasca in Brazilians's urban shamanism this experimental ethnographic film is direct by an anthropologist and a visual artist.

Paper long abstract:

This experimental film exploits the transe of ayahuasca in Brazilians's urban shamanism throught an ethnography of the trance language, their contact with cosmic forces, and magic beings embodiment. It proposes a sensorial dialogical cinema intending to research ways to deal with forms of communication with the world that are given by drunkenness: a body technique of altered state of reason.

Ayahuasca is a psychoactive brew originally from some indigenous traditions from western Amazon that has been widely spread by grouping of urban shamans reinventing and multiplying rituals since the 1970s.

In the field of ayahuasca shamans's practices of São Paulo, this film project aims to illuminate the way women build sorority, how they empower themselves and each other, their ability to understand and to perform politically in a unique manner based on the knowledge brought up by trance.

This research seeks to shed light on the trance, the doubts, and the knowledge produced by the performance of ayahuasca's ritual of urban shamans as a catalyst for sociopolitical hopes and anxieties since through the body in transe emerge utopias, hopes, and tensions.

Panel P14
Co-agitō ergo sum: Bodies in Rhythm and Rhythms of Embodiment
  Session 1