Kodak 16mm provides a privileged perspective for 2018 Cannes screener Chuva É Cantoria Na Aldeia Dos Mortos (The Dead and The Others) kodak.com/PT/pt/motion/blog/blog_post
THE-DEAD-AND-THE-OTHERS-4-300DPI Shot in Super 16mm format using only KODAK VISION3 500T Color Negative Film (7219), the long-form narrative feature Chuva É Cantoria Na Aldeia Dos Mortos (The Dead And The Others), screening in the Un Certain Regard section of the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, provides a privileged perspective of the profoundly spiritual and deeply vulnerable indigenous Krahô society in northern Brazil. Co-helmed by the multiple award-winning Portuguese director João Salaviza and Brazilian cinematographer Renée Nader Messora, the documentary-style production saw the pair travel to Pedra Branca, a small village in the protected Kraolândia Reservation, part of the remote state of Tocantins, some 1,000km north of the Brazilian capital. Armed with a diminutive lens and camera package, no lighting equipment, and 85 x 112m rolls of 500T, they shot their touching, contemporary story in chronological order over a nine-month period, from June 2016 to February 2017, in searing heat and torrential seasonal downpours, with locals acting out the story from a loose narrative structure in their native Krahô language. “Before we went, people said we were crazy and that what we wanted to achieve was impossible,” says Salaviza. “But I would like to think that this film, shot in Super 16mm, will inspire others to tell unique and important stories and demonstrate that it is perfectly possible, and actually very sensible, to film on film no matter what the challenges might be.” The story of Chuva É Cantoria Na Aldeia Dos Mortos follows sixteen-year-old Ihjãc, who has been having nightmares since his father died. One night, when the village is quiet, he hears a distant chant coming through the dense palm forest. Magically, his father’s voice calls him to a nearby waterfall, and Ihjãc realizes that it is time to organize the traditional funerary feast so that his father’s spirit can depart from a state of limbo and enter into the ethereal village of the dead. Denying his duty, and in order to escape the ritual process of becoming a shaman, Ihjãc runs away to the city in search of broader answers. However, being far away from his people and his culture, he faces the harsh reality of what it is like to be an indigenous person in contemporary Brazil. Brazilian cinematographer Nader Messora is no stranger to Kraolândia. She shot a short
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