Luz nos trópicos

Brazilian filmmaker Paula Gaitán has added to her already diverse body of work LUZ NOS TRÓPICOS (Light in the Tropics, Brazil 2020), an extraordinary project interwoven with indigenous cosmologies. Not only is water a central element here, but the four-hour film itself is highly fluid, creating flowing transitions between different temporal planes and developing a dense fabric of storylines and settings. At the beginning, a young man of indigenous descent stands on the wintry East River, soon he can be seen traveling upstream through the Brazilian jungle toward a village where he is greeted like an old acquaintance. In a second thread, the director accompanies a group of European settlers. They too travel upstream, gathering, taking possession, and searching for a position from which they can oversee the forest and the river. About 150 years separate the two levels, sometimes a headlong dive into the water can cancel the separation in a matter of seconds. Later, the returns to the north and the levels fall into each other. There is only one cut between Walden Pond and the Amazon. (bik)