Laura Faerman has been a curator, researcher, and documentarist for the past twenty years. Faerman was an audiovisual researcher at The Indigenous National Truth Commission in 2014. This commission investigated for the first-time violations of Native rights during the 1964-1985 military dictatorship. With Marina Weis, she created the six 26-minute episodes series “Dangerous Memory.” She curated the exhibitions “Passion of Memory” and “Truth Game – Documentaries by Peter Watkins.” She currently works at The Agribusiness Watch, a main reference in the Brazilian
Independent media covering the political power of Agribusiness.
Marina Weis was born in São Paulo, Brazil, and has directed five short films as a photographer, producer, and editor. “We Others,” her first experimental documentary, is inspired by a dreamlike journey of Latin American exchanges. She curated the film showcase “Memory and Transformation” for the Vladimir Herzog Institute and the short film, co-directed with Laura Faerman, “Vlado and Birri: encounters,” both framing the memory of military dictatorship years in South America.
“The Wind Blows the Border” is screening at the 2022 Hot Docs Canadian International Film Festival, which is taking place April 28-May 8. Find more information on the fest’s website.
W&H: Describe the film for us in your own words.
LF: “The Wind Blows the Border” narrates the trajectory of two women who are on opposite sides of a violent conflict over land in Brazil. The film depicts two contradictory and incompatible universes: the one of the landowners and the one of Indigenous Peoples.
During the filming of the documentary the extreme right won federal power in Brazil, and Jair Bolsonaro became president. The Indigenous population has been organized, but their rights are still under threat.
MW: The film tells the story of the struggle for land through two antagonistic characters: Alenir Aquino Ximenes, a woman of the Guarani-Kaiowá ethnicity, community leader, and teacher at an indigenous school, on the one hand, and Luana Ruiz Silva, a white woman, a lawyer and heiress to her family’s farms. located on the border of Brazil and Paraguay, a region historically inhabited by the Guarani-Kaiowá population.
The film’s deeper and more complex layer focuses on the clash of cultures. It is about the radically different ways that the characters understand, narrat, and inhabit the world of their central characters. It also discusses the ongoing colonial process that, even in the 21st Century, continues to maintain its ideology of white racial supremacy and violence and oppression against cultures, bodies, or forms of life that don’t submit to it.
W&H: What drew you to this story?
LF. What brought me to this story was my 2014 research with the Indigenous National Truth Commission. This commission, which was investigating the violence that the Brazilian Military Dictatorship (1964-1985), committed against Indigenous Peoples for the first time, was a pioneer in investigating such violence. More than 8,300 Indigenous persons were killed in this period. In 2014, I visited Mato Grosso do Sul several times and heard from survivors of different ethnicities. I went to several Guarani-Kaiowá villages and wanted to understand more about those people who face everything to stay close to their sacred lands.
MW: What drew me to this story was to find this exemplary situation of land expropriation and territorial conflict, very similar to countless other cases that have occurred with hundreds of other indigenous communities over the centuries, and, at the same time, a very unique case, due to the context, trajectory and strength of those people. I was very interested in the process called “retomada” carried out by that community, which is an autonomous action of an indigenous group to recover its ancestral territory taken away from them by white people.
It is a very impressive process of resistance and self-determination, based on resilience and spiritual faith. I was also interested in portraying the emergence of female leaders, not only in their traditional roles as caretakers and sustainers of the culture but also as spokespersons in this dispute of narratives and worldviews, taking the lead in the struggle beyond the limits of their communities and calling on all of us to wake up to change our relationship with what the Western culture calls “nature.”
The other side of the same story is that we can also see the emergence Bolsonarism in the country. Its social stratum, and mentality, are very well represented by the Silva Ruiz family. They are not the traditional landowners and oligarchs that have historically dominated Brazil’s politics, but an average middle-class that does not understand the otherness and is unable accept the right of the indigenous people to be different.
W&H: What do you want people to think about after they watch the film?
LF: I want people to know that in times of global warming, there are Indigenous women and men in Brazil fighting for the planet and risking their lives to protect it. Native Peoples all over the world have a lot to teach us about the main dilemma we face today, and which concerns us all: the preservation of planet Earth.
MW: I don’t believe in narrative impartiality, so I hope that people don’t come out of the film impartial, but that they come out thinking. I hope that the film doesn’t deliver a simplistic, Manichean message about this long conflict, but that it gives the audience elements to reflect on the clash of worldviews presented and the different aesthetics and ethics of ways of existing in this world.
Finally, I hope that people update their visions of indigenous peoples beyond the old clichés, and understand why these native cultures are today a source of inspiration and learning for us to collectively face the immense challenge of the climate catastrophe produced by the Western way of life.
W&H: What was the biggest challenge in making the film?
LF: The coup against President Dilma was already taking place when we began filming. These were not easy times, but nothing compares to living in Brazil and seeing indigenous rights being dismantled. The biggest cinematographic challenge for me was to understand how to portray such antagonistic universes. How to create different aesthetics for those disparate realities and yet form a cohesive film.
This understanding was a learning process, a discovery. It was only when we lived with the indigenous community, sleeping at Alenir’s house – just three people, me, the photographer, and the sound technician – that we began to capture her intimate universe. The image shows that our relationship with farmers was not one of formality.
MW: There were many challenges, but for me, personally, one of the biggest challenges was the emotional impact of following the rise of the extreme right to power throughout the process and all that this represents in terms of setbacks, loss of rights, and escalation of violence for those people and communities who were already living in a state of extreme vulnerability even before.
In cinematographic terms, it was undoubtedly the choice to portray these two such antagonistic universes in the most respectful and complex way possible.
W&H: How did you get your film funded? Please share your insights on how you got the film made.
LF: “The Wind Blows the Border” had several stages of research and recording, financed by different funds. Our first step was the accompanying the Indigenous National Truth Commission, which first investigated the violences perpetrated against Brazilian Indigenous Peoples by the Brazilian military dictatorship (1964-1985). It was financed by the Secretary of Culture of the City of São Paulo.
In 2016, we traveled to Mato Grosso do Sul for the second stage of our research on the current state of agrarian conflict. This research was funded by the cultural program of a Brazilian bank named Itaú. With the same fund, we also recorded audiovisual research in 2017. This footage was eventually included in the film. The following recordings were made with funds from the Brazilian Ministry of Culture — when there was still a Ministry of Culture in Brazil.
MW: It took many years and several stages to finance the film, as Laura describes. Due to political problems in Brazil, we had to wait a whole year before we could continue filming. This forced us to update some narrative aspects, as time passed and new events took place. This was another challenging task.
W&H: What inspired you to become a filmmaker?
LF: My father was one of the first Brazilian journalists to use literary narrative techniques in the writing of non-fiction works, in the 1960s and ’70s. He created alternative newspapers that were relevant during the period of military dictatorship in Brazil (1964-1985), where he condemned the atrocities perpetrated by the military. He continued his journalistic work, even though he was tortured and arrested.
Since I was a child, he and his generation have inspired me, in their courage to denounce injustices and fight for a less unequal world. My struggle is the same, but my weapon is the camera, not the pen. Making documentaries is for me a tool.
For understanding, understanding, and transforming the worlds.
MW: It was initially the cinematic experience that had an impact on me. In a movie theatre, I experience a multi-sensory experience. It involves the visual and plastic elements, color composition, light, shadow, and colors, rhythm, poetry, music, the dream, and the words. It seemed to me to be a powerful tool for knowledge, communication and understanding.
A film’s creative process requires collaboration and dialogue. This is a challenging task that can lead to a lot of learning. Personally, I am interested handcrafted filmmaking. The process is just as important than the end result.
W&H: What’s the best and worst advice you’ve received?
LF: During the realization of “The Wind Blows the Border” I heard the following advice: “Trust the process.” That phrase became almost a mantra for me and still helps me today.
MW: I think the worst “advice” was my own fear of failure, that after so much effort, the film would not turn out satisfactory. And in that same sense, we learn as much from our mistakes as from our successes. So, maybe the best advice I received is that each film needs to find its audience.
W&H: What advice do you have for other women directors?
LF: The documentary world is male-dominated, and can be very truculent. Today the world is much more diverse than when I started making documentaries, but the power still lies with the men. But I think we need to believe in changes because without fighting for them, reality will never be different.
MW: I don’t feel in a position to give advice, but share what I repeat to myself: take risks, and don’t get stuck because of fear or the judgment of others. Follow your curiosity and live the experience. It is not possible to control everything — sometimes almost nothing — but if you are clear about your purposes, you will know why and where to go. Although it won’t be easy, it will transform you and others. Find allies along the journey.
W&H: Name your favorite woman-directed film and why.
LF: I love “Citizenfour,” directed by Laura Poitras because it is a fascinating film about an important subject that’s made in an intimate, risky, and intense way.
MW: I don’t have a favorite movie and I have a hard time with ratings . It all depends on the moment. Today, spontaneously, the name of a Brazilian movie from the ’80s called “Hour of the Star” by the director Suzana Amaral, based on the novel of the same name from a great Brazilian-Ukrainian writer, Clarice Lispector, comes to my mind. The greatness of the film and of the novel is in the delicate construction of the main character’s subjectivity and the hard social reality in which she lives. This is a tough film with poetry that I want to see again.
W&H: How are you adjusting to life during the COVID-19 pandemic? Are you keeping creative, and if so, how?
LF. The pandemic in Brazil was devastating for the people who live there. I was able to stay isolated and only went out to travel for 20 days to Mato Grosso do Sul. I was there to investigate a murder of an important indigenous leader committed in the 2000s, at the behest of the patriarch of a traditional Brazilian elite family. I visited his grave, in the middle of an area of conflict, where gunmen were shooting at night.
I filmed the cattle farms of that rich family from São Paulo which exports meat to Europe. I went to the dumps in Dourados, where children from the indigenous community were collecting food scraps for their meals. Covid-19 has had a devastating impact on Brazil, particularly the most vulnerable, and we now have a far-right President who is destroying everything that has been built in this nation. However, I feel creative and full-of-energy because I am involved in resistance to the extreme right by working on documentary projects with an investigative journalism agency.
MW: We finished editing the film “The Wind Blows the Border” and a television series called “The Dangerous Memory” about the impact of the military dictatorship on the lives of dozens of indigenous peoples in Brazil almost immediately after the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic. It was a time of deepening my learning with indigenous peoples over the past years. This included the importance of community relations, the need for strengthening our resilience and collective resistance, as well as the search for coherence between speech & action, thinking globally, but acting locally, to change consumption patterns, and to regenerate our relationship to the land and with our community.
I was creative and adaptable to the new realities. Some projects had to be interrupted and others strengthened. I was already working with social, art-education, and permaculture projects, and was then able to dedicate myself more to these activities, together with filmmaking.
Currently, I am focused on accompanying processes of community empowerment, the creation of agro-forests and community gardens in urban spaces, and, obviously, I continue to fight for environmental justice.
W&H: The film industry has a long history of underrepresenting people of color onscreen and behind the scenes and reinforcing — and creating — negative stereotypes. What actions do you think need to be taken to make Hollywood and/or the doc world more inclusive?
LF: In the documentary “The Wind Blows the Border” we try to break many of the stereotypes already normalized in Brazilian society against the Guarani-Kaiowá Indigenous People, a minority that suffers double prejudice. It is subject to prejudice against Native Peoples, and is not able to accept the stereotype of Indigenous. Like half of the Brazilian Indigenous population, the Guarani-Kaiowá live very close to the cities, as their lands were taken and deforested, and they assimilated habits and products of non-Indigenous society, without feeling less Indigenous.
One of the strategies we used to combat stereotypes was to closely follow the daily life of the Guarani-Kaiowá character, Alenir, without interviews or mediations, listening to her speak in her native language and trying not to interfere with her actions. During the recordings, we tried to go beyond a superficial layer and delve into her world, portraying it with delicacy and respect.
I believe that the beauty of the world is in its diversity of languages, nations and cultures. This should be widely recognized. We must fight stereotypes with our films. They are based on a homogenizing vision for the world. Cinema is a powerful communication tool that can open our eyes and hearts and make the world a better destination.
MW: I believe in the need for public and private sector policies to repair the centuries of injustice, racism, and oppression. In this sense, I think affirmative action and racial quotas are essential, both in education and in all areas of cinematographic activity, from financing to exhibition. I also believe in supporting social mobilizations, and grassroots movements that demand greater representation and no longer accept the roles to which they have historically been relegated.
I think that the protagonism of people of color, of the entire BIPOC community, is essential, on-screen and behind the scenes, in filmmaking and film criticism, on the juries of festivals, in short, in decisive positions and not only accessory ones.
Besides, I think it is urgent to deepen the critical revision of the mainstream media, which still maintains a racist and classist language. They must be updated or they will be consigned to the dustbin of history.
Source: Women And Hollywood