Cinema of Brazil: Afro-Brazilian Perspectives is a film festival at the Barbican that seeks to celebrate ‘the nation’s foremost Afro-Brazilian actors, directors, intellectuals and musicians’. This is one of the features of the Brazil season in London, courtesy of the Brazilian embassy that is ‘adding a splash of [welcomed, needed, appreciated and valued] colour to [a typically grey] autumn in London’.
Inevitably this thematically diverse series of films both provides a platform to shed light on, and create a foundation, for an equally well-rounded discourse on socio-political and cultural issues that are relevant to Afro-Brazilians today. The line up of films therefore look to, in my view, divert from the generalised / stereotypical perceptions of the black Brazilian experience that has pervaded the global psyche partly due to the success and consequently wide accessibility of the explicitly violent films that portray gang sub-culture in the favelas (slums) of Rio de Janeiro, such as the avid-shooting-and-dropping-like-flies Cidade de Deus (City of God) and its sequel Cidade dos Homens (City of Men). On a brief but related digression, in this regard, these generalisations apparently parallel with the success of the South African film industry through Tsotsi and Jerusalema. A strikingly analogous portrayal and likewise perception of the Black British inner city experience is suggestive of the films Kidulthood and its sequel Adulthood. In all these world-apart instances (geographically, politically, culturally, socially, etc) oxymoronically, the success of these films is also their own nemesis. I say this not to belittle or deny the presence of violence in these innately complex communities and the powerful and positive use of a far-reaching and visually engaging medium to convey an urgent message to the masses on a global scale. The way of addressing this, to my mind, beyond contextualised debate is at the root – the film industry, which includes the funders.
But without digressing too much from the main objective of this post, the definition of Afro-Brazilian, and on a larger scale, Afro-identity in Latin America and its nuances struck me. This is addressed in the report by Minority Rights Group International titled ‘No Longer Invisible: Afro-Latin Americans Today’, which presents an elaborate discourse that pervades the historical, cultural, socio-economic conjunctions of an incredibly complex and unique experience with an expansive, inclusive approach that nourishes and encourages comparative enquiry both within the diverse Latin American population and without, e.g. the United States and the Afro-Latino diaspora.
The following patchwork of excerpts by Anani Dzidzienyo, to my mind, capture the intrinsic, expansive complexity of Afro-identity in Latin America.
On race and colour of the Afro-Latino:
On matters of race and color, the novice does well to tred lightly when approaching societies and systems such as those in Latin America. Non-whiteness and blackness, one quickly learns, are not interchangeable concepts; never assume blackness, and determine, with delicacy, the individual’s personal identification, which may not be consistent with that assigned by him or her by others. For the Latin American, a similar challenge awaits in North America, say or continental Africa, where what is perceived as ‘white’ may very well be, to the person concerned, ‘black’.
In connection with the afore-mentioned Afro-Brazilian film festival:
That Afro-Latin Americans have consistently developed cultural initiatives in response to their predicament is testimony to their unwillingness to embrace victimhood. Yet those initiatives in no way address issues of political and economic power and representation, nor do they resolve tension between actual power and symbolic power.
This, in my view, mirrors the foray of African cultural initiatives, such as the recent Lagos-Abuja-Washington DC-London tour of ThisDay Africa Rising Music and Fashion Festival – a celebration of Africa by showcasing Africa’s popular culture icons. Indeed such initiatives are not the solution but constitute a distinct, palpable thread that contributes to the web of initiatives that construct the multi-faceted solution.
On the historical presence of Africans in Brazil:
Is slavery still relevant? Yes and no. To argue that one cannot continue to talk back to slavery and its socio-racial economic structures to account for the conditions of Afro-Latin Americans does not mean that it ipso facto ceases to be relevant, especially in the view of the images and roles linked to slavery.
The icing on the cake in this analysis (I saved the best for last):
Of particular interest are the multiple meanings of Africa for the Afro-Latin Americans. Nowhere in the Americas has there ever existed a undimensionally positive image of Africa…Fundamental to any understanding of Afro-Latin Americans is, I believe, the question of Africa. Deeply embedded in centuries-old shame, the idea of this continent has a central, though rarely considered role in the complex relations among its descendants in the diaspora and the larger societies in which they live. The real and imagined meanings of Africa in all its richness and contradictoriness beg to be contemplated not as aspects of a single phenomenon but as factors in the dynamic of Afro-Latin American life today.
Dzidzienyo’s recommendation offers a ray of hope:
A program that seeks not just to catalogue distinct historical events but, first and foremost, to identify and monitor (currency being of primary importance here) the intersections of history, economics, politics and culture among nations with populations of African descent, [such as] The African Diaspora Research Project…Africa and Afro-Latin America: reconnecting the two through mutual exchanges of learning and information would surely count as one of the more fruitful outcomes of any effort to shed light on Afro-Latin Americans.
Postscript: Dzidzienyo’s use of ‘Latin America’ encompasses the geographical region of the Americas where the Latin-derived languages French, Spanish and Portugese are spoken, and therefore includes the Caribbean islands such as Cuba, Dominican Republic, Haiti.
