Screening of "Gyuri"

Gyuri draws an improbable geopolitical line from the small town of Nagyvárad, in Hungary, to the indigenous villages in the Amazon, Brazil. Claudia Andujar begins this drawing by escaping World War II and going to Brazil, where she dedicates herself to photography. Living among the Yanomami people, she builds an image collection of this ethnicity while, at the same time, fighting for the land demarcation of the Yanomami people. By narrating this story, the movie gives rise to an imaginary geography crossed by places, languages and those chosen by affection.

Programme

• Welcome from the Department of Social Anthropology
• Short presentation of the film and its theme
• Showing of the film
• Q&A session afterwards

About Claudia Andujar

Claudine Haas grew up in Hungary, the daughter in a Jewish family. At age 13, she fled from the war with her mother, who was a protestant, to the United States, where she changed her name to Claudia Andujar. At 23, in 1955, she moves to Brazil. She became interested in photography because she understood that through it she could  communicate with and approach other people. She came across the Yanomami people in the early 1970s, and has dedicated her existence to preserving their culture. She has produced a valuable iconographic collection that attracted the attention of important cultural institutions to the Yanomamis.

The film "Gyuri" is a work in progress that attempts to narrate the life-work of Claudia, a woman lost her family and people, but tried to save another. It is a film about wars: the war on Europe, against the Jewish people,  and the war in Brazil, silent and ongoing, against the indigenous peoples.

About the Yanomami

The Yanomami are a society that inhabits the rainforest of northern Amazon. Its territory covers approximately 192,000 km², occupying both sides of the Brazil-Venezuela border. The total population of the Yanomami in both countries is estimated at 35,000 people, 24,000 of them in Brazil, divided into 228 communities. The “Terra Indígena Yanomami”, or Yanomami Land, with boundaries delimited by Claudia and her companions, covers 96,650 square kilometers (37,316,773,624 square miles) of tropical forest.

About the filmmaker

Mariana Lacerda is an award winning Brazilian documentary maker, screenwriter, director and author. Gyuri is her first feature film. She has written and directed several short films, such as Menino-aranha (2008/2009), A Vida Noturna das Igrejas de Olinda (2012), Pausas Silenciosas (2013), Baleia Magic Park (2015) and Deserto (2016, for Aparelhamento, Ocupação Funarte/SP). 

Mariana Lacerda is visiting Bergen at the invitation of the Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design at the University of Bergen.