Video in the Villages Presents Itself
In 1987, The Video in the Villages project was founded in Brazil to give indigenous people control over their own representation, and to give them the power to use the media for their goals. This video documents the process of training and the first videos made by the project’s indigenous videomakers. It also shows the national conferences where indigenous producers from the whole of Brazil met to discuss the use of video for their goals of documenting and preserving traditions, making political claims, dramatizing legends, and representing themselves to the rest of the nation. Ultimately, the project has begun a public television channel in 1995, the “Indigenous Program,” a space for indigenous people to combat the racist understandings of mainstream Brazil, an original experience for the first time on Brazilian television.
Reviews
Video in the Villages: A Brief Introduction
The Video in the Villages Project was initially animated by Vincent Carelli, the founder of the Center for Indigenous Advocacy in São Paulo, Brazil. The institute was founded for the purpose in the pursuit of fundamental rights for the native Brazilians. Since the emergence of video technologies in around 1987, Carelli kick-started the Video in the Villages Project, giving the…
Directors
Mari Correa
Mari Corrêa has been a producer, editor, and director of documentary films for over twenty years. She studied social science at Pont ifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo and cinema at the Université de Paris III. Corrêa began her career editing documentaries for independent French filmmakers and European television. Since 1998, she has been a co-director of Video in the Villages.
Vincent Carelli
Carelli founded The Video in the Villages Project, an ongoing series that grew out of the frustrating experiences the native Brazilian Waiãpi had with ethnographic filming in their villages. The project has had a profound effect on native and self image and relations with white institutions. Indigenous members learn about video technology and participate in the editing and production.