MTSU Crews Help Indigenous Brazil Filmmakers Earn National Geographic Grant

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Teamwork by two MTSU professors on a project to help indigenous filmmakers tell their stories and share their efforts to save their Amazon rainforest has earned recognition and funding for the artists from the National Geographic Society.

Paul Chilsen, an associate professor of video and film production in the Department of Media Arts, wants to make a fourth trip this summer with students to work alongside the Kayapó people, who live along the Xingu River in northwest Brazil amid more than 27 million acres of rainforest.

Once there, they hope to conduct workshops in writing for film, operating cameras, designing sets and costumes, and acting.

Dr. Richard Pace of MTSU’s Department of Sociology and Anthropology, whose study-abroad trip with students in Brazil this spring was cut short because of COVID-19 virus threat precautions, wrote up the grant request for National Geographic with Purdue University professor Laura Zanotti, Kayapó filmmaker Pat-i and a team of indigenous and international filmmakers.

National Geographic responded with nearly $70,000 in funding for Pat-i and his colleagues to move ahead on their project, “Indigenous Filmmaker Warriors in Defense of Biocultural Conservation.”

Pace said the MTSU group hopes to continue their workshops this summer in the village of A’Ukre, Brazil. Unfortunately, the country’s health ministry confirmed the first case of COVID-19 among Amazon indigenous people April 1, leaving the plans still in limbo.

So far, the MTSU and Kayapó crews have worked on one film, “Nhakpokti,” the Kayapó love story of the descent of the Star Goddess and the origin of agriculture. There’s still a staggering checklist of tasks ahead, including academic conferences and journal articles and a post-project filmmakers’ workshop on social-media content guidelines for other indigenous conservation activists.

The Kayapó first met Western outsiders in the 1950s. They’ve increasingly used technology, particularly video, to boost their efforts to protect and preserve their land. Some Kayapó have said their video cameras are becoming the new weapons of their traditional warrior society.

The MTSU groups have been helping the Kayapó add storytelling techniques to their arsenal to share their culture, defend their rights and draw more attention to their conservation work.

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