THE PROCESS-WORK NHEMONGUETA KUNHÃ MBARAETE (2019) AS A TESTIMONY TO THE COLLECTIVE PRACTICE OF WOMEN FILMMAKERS

Abstract

This paper analyzes the process-work Nhemongueta Kunhã Mbaraete (2019), created by Indigenous filmmakers Michele Kaiowá, Graciela Guarani, and Patrícia Ferreira Pará Yxapy, alongside non-Indigenous filmmaker Sophia Pinheiro. We reflect on the collective resistance of Indigenous women filmmakers as a living testimony of an ancestral history marked by violence. We address the significance and challenges of the category "Indigenous cinema," viewing the presence of these filmmakers as an opportunity to record and reframe the ancestral knowledge of original peoples, particularly in the face of the loss of expertise and archives resulting from colonial genocide. Nhemongueta consists of the sharing of video-letters; our analysis focuses on the second conversation, exploring the relationship between body-territory as memory and the presence of the gesture in the act of filming. Through this sharing, the filmmakers transform their culture into images, turning cinema into a testimony of their bodies present in everyday life and in the construction of reality.