A 3ª via FILMS Production Directed and Produced by Roderick Steel
São Paulo, Brazil, December, 2011 – 3ª via FILMS is proud to announce the completion of the documentary film THE BALANCE (A Balança) directed and produced by São Paulo-based vídeo-artist and filmmaker Roderick Steel. For more details: http://abalancaofilme.blogspot.com/
short synopsis 10 years in the making – and presenting the first footage of Egungun in over 25 years - The Balance explores the hardships of initiating children into a death cult that brings ancestors back to life through dance and ritual in São Paulo, Brazil. In the eyes of Zú - a high priest and upholsterer - we witness a series of trials designed to reveal future generations of priests in a community that battles to safeguard a strict code of rules and ethics in the 21st century . Technical info 99 minutes, Color, Stereo Exhibition Format: DVD, Mini DV, DVCAM Production format: Hi 8, Mini Dv, DVCAM Portuguese, Brazil, 2012 Contact: Roderick Steel Av. Diógenes Ribeiro de Lima 3564 . Alto da Lapa, São Paulo, SP CEP 05083-010 BRAZIL 55-11-3645-1503 rodericksteel@gmail.com
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The Egungun Cult is one of the world’s oldest surviving masquerades. This ancient form of worship and ritual play has survived to offer insights into the very origins of theatre, how society was and still can be re-organized through ritual performance, and how art and creativity can be used to change people’s lives. These ancestral performances reshape perceptions of the world and give concrete form to ontological concepts: spirits, which are normally inaccessible, unseen, or imagined, are brought into the phenomenal world where they can be contemplated and celebrated, in exchange for favours and cures. THE BALANCE tells the story of Zú, a High Priest at an Egungun temple who summons spirits that manipulate the perceptual world as it is experienced daily; playing upon, embellishing and transforming reality. Made over a 10–year period, the film explores Zú s motives, his past and the insightful, ethically-driven world he has painstakingly created in his backyard. It shows us how Zú and the other priests at the temple severed ties with the temple’s founders in 1995, isolating themselves from Brazil’s oldest temples in Bahia, northeastern Brazil. We learn how they continue to embody and perpetuate formulas that have become models for interpretation and experimentation - tried and true formulas developed over time by generations of wise people who give spirits a transitory concreteness.
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Descriptive synopsis Life in the outskirts of São Paulo's impoverished municipality of Diadema is pretty provincial. "We used to walk barefoot to school," recalls Zú, in Roderick Steel's intimate portrayal of life inside the Egungun cult in Brazil. At the start of the film, Zú's wife - possessed by an enchanted male ancestor - tells the filmmaker. "We are ancestor spirits now: but one day you will be gone and you too will become an ancestor. And so begins The Balance, a verité portrait of life in a temple that charts the tireless efforts of temple followers to overcome a turbulent past, ever-present conflicts, and establish their own vision of the future. At first glance Zú is just an ordinary upholsterer, a man able to endure life's trials with quiet dignity, but slowly a philosophical zeal for discussing life and especially – death is revealed: making more than evident his calling to become a Head Priest. Zú is also the guiding light behind other temple neophytes, who also share their intimate, painful experiences with extreme candour, in a long visual poem of resignation, pathos and rebirth. In one scene, Zú admonishes Silvino, a temple elder, for not facing up to an internal disagreement with irresponsible novices. "If you fail to confront them, you know that the Ancestor Spirits will call them for a beating: and I do not want to be disgraced by such behaviour from the Ancestor Spirits." Silvino understands immediately: "It's up to us to maintain the balance." Zú then reminds him, "This is an ancient cult, with ancient values." Later, an Ancestor Spirit accidentally strikes an elderly priestess during a celebration. Blame is assigned to a neophyte whose job it is to keep the Ancestors at bay with the aid of a long stick. "All of you will now be punished at the feet of the earth spirit," one of the priests warns the assembled stick-bearers. "But I have a stomach ache," one of them utters, before he and others are led out of the temple. Behind the scenes a handful of mothers try to negotiate a truce with the priests. One of them returns and irately exclaims, "By coddling your children, and questioning the spirits, you have almost destroyed this temple." Moments later, the spirits re-enter the temple, angered and seeking further retribution. Diva – Zú s wife – is quick to explain: "At first the mothers dislike it here, but when they see their children change, they also change. As for the kids, unless they are beaten, they don't think they're real men."
Just as the Egungun masks refer backward in time, to ancestral spirits, to a presumed past, they simultaneously renegotiate the present:
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A priest s son is caught in the crossfire between an Egungun s request for him to play music, and his mother s order that he not play music for Egungun.
A young priest is ritually prepared for his initiation, after which he will becomeone-with-death . During the ritual he is consecrated by his own deceased father s spirit. (An initiation into the Egungun priesthood has never been filmed before)
Under the guidance of the elders, boys as young as 5 become stick-bearers : they must face up to their deepest fears, learn to work in a group, or suffer the penalties.
Trailer and more information at: http://abalancaofilme.blogspot.com/
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Director’s Statement December 2011 As often happens, the making of “The Balance’ could easily generate a parallel film, imbedding the filmmaker’s trials and tribulations into the film s narrative, contextualizing the difficulty of filming an impossibly secretive ancestor cult. Such an approach – which has become a legitimizing tactic for many filmmakers unable to penetrate the subjects of their films – was rehearsed endlessly throughout the 10-year period it took to make this film. In brief: Initial contact with members of the São Paulo temple where ‘The Balance’ takes place, was made in 1999. The temple was enduring a moment of upheaval and it was only in 2001 that I was finally allowed to produce ‘blurred’ images of the ancestors (without a flash). Even so, many photos were considered ‘too vivid’ and many Egungun ignored my requests to photograph them.
From the outset it was made clear that the ancestors - not the priests - would decide if I could film in the temple. In 2002 I was allowed to film from a distance by a couple Egungun, and spent entire nights awaiting permission from others: in vain. By 2005 I had one hour of footage, which provides the film with important visual references. In 2007 the temple underwent major changes, and I was called in especially to film an important initiation for internal purposes : as proof of proper initiation conduct. The video was intended as visual evidence, should other Egungun temples - in Bahia – com to question the legitimacy of the event. In 2008 Zú arranged a group interview with fellow priests which lasted an hour. Individual interviews were not allowed. Soon afterwards I was banned from filming altogether and from 2008-2011 I continued to frequent the temple, without a video or stills camera. Almost the entire film was shot between 2007-2008. But I did not have a film, yet.
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Finally, in 2009, High-Priest Zú gave me an interview and made explicit his emotions about the many losses he endured in his life. His voice track from the interviews was then used to inform as much of the footage as possible, in a style not dissimilar to Rouch s Jaguar. Finally, in early 2011 his step-daughter and wife agreed to interviews, allowing me to finish the film. N.B. Though an important cultural and religious phenomenon in Brazil – the word ‘Egungun’ is commonly used to denote an angry spirit. TV Globo made a short incursion into the cult in Bahia in 1985, the same year a filmmaker - Carlos Brajblat - made a documentary about the Agboula temple. Since then: nothing. THE BALANCE presents footage of Brazilian Egungun for the first time in over a quarter of a century.
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DIRECTOR
S BIOGRAPHY:
Roderick has worked with video in the US, UK & Brazil. Overriding concerns in his work include the journey images take within other images, how images behave in different media and how they relate to each other, using photography and cinema as references. This applies to how images of the self are projected into the image world: through trance and other sublime experiences. His art videos have been exhibited in art, film and ethnographic festivals in Argentina, Canada, Colombia, Korea, Germany, Denmark, Spain, Serbia, U.S.A & the U.K. He won Best Brazilian Video at the 2010 Arte.mov Festival, participated in Video-Brasil in 2011, Bienal Ventosul, and Bienal do Recôncavo. Roderick’s photographic work on Brazilian religions has been a major reference for people working in the field, and is featured in the book 'Mythology of the Orixás', in 'Brésil, L'heritage Africaine' at the Musée Dapper,‘Africa em Nós’ at Museu AfroBrasil, and seen at the World Photography Organization site, and is a special feature of the BBC site on World religions. He is currently completing post-production on his first, second and third feature documentaries on highly secretive aspects of African-Brazilian religions, which he started researching in 2000. The first of these, ‘The First Tear” will be released in 2014 as a multi-media artist’s e-book, and the third, ‘Kingdoms’ (http://www.reinoswebdoc.com/) can be viewed online. ( “The Balance” is the second film of the trilogy, and will be released in it shorter version, “Reflection” in some festivals) He is also in production on a 4-screen expanded documentary called ‘Markers’, that charts the agency of still and moving images of the body in trance (which can itself be considered the first ‘medium’ between worlds) through different media, such as newspapers, magazines, the Internet, and as printed image-objects, and how this transit is transforming the African-Brazilian religion of candomblé today. He has curated and worked in partnership with African-Brazilian priests in landmark exhibitions in São Paulo, that fuse art, technology and religion.
N.B. Issues raised by the film (corporal punishment, the initiation of young children into family religions) as well as detailed segments on rituals and temple history are dealt with in episodes that will be included on the DVD and posted on the Films site. Examples can be seen here: http://vimeo.com/22959223
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