Hudson Moura

In the digital documentary »Xapiri«, which depicts an indigenous shamanistic ritual in the Amazonian rainforest, the film apparatus makes its numerical impressions of reality more visible than ever. Thus, the idea of filmic experience becomes legitimate to both the filmmakers and audience. Viewers cannot entirely benefit from the meaning of Yanomami’s language and culture because of the abundance of information inhabiting in and off the frame, however they are totally aware of the technological apparatus, which is filming, interpreting and mediating an indigenous ritual. In »Xapiri« the profusion of images and visual effects detaches the image from its real object thus creating this abstract zone, or digital opacity, closer to the »real« nature of the numerical image. This shows the film’s refusal or inability to represent the actual reality, while instead simulating an intended world, the one where filmmakers and Yanomamis’ images are able to merge. Filmmakers utilized superimpositions and layering foregrounding the medium, in order to approach a much denser and unachievable image, that of the Yanomamis. It would be meaningless and counterproductive to film the rituals from a realistic or naturalistic point of view, argue the filmmakers, because the “realization” of shamanism, its way of becoming real, escapes entirely documentary standards and criteria. The film creates a preponderant sense of the film as an immersive and unfolding cinematic experience liberating documentarians from the task of portraying reality and instead given them the freedom to create a new one. This communication aims to explore how digital filmmaking is enhancing, expanding as well as obfuscating and negating conventional filmic experience of reality.

Hudson Moura is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Spanish & Portuguese at the University of Toronto. He holds a PhD from University of Montreal and a MA degrees from PUC-São Paulo. Before joining the University of Toronto he taught at Ryerson University, Simon Fraser University, several colleges in Brazil and University of Algarve in Portugal. He teaches Luso-Brazilian literature, film and culture as well as Hispanic diaspora literature and cinema. His current research focuses on film adaptation. He has published in academic journals in French, Portuguese and English. His first book, in preparation, reunites his doctoral and postdoctoral research on exile and diaspora discourse in film and literature. Presently he is working in the post-production of a documentary featuring Brazilian-Canadian dancer Newton Moraes.