- A recent workshop for Indigenous youth in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest employed smartphones as movie cameras to challenge what one often assumes about filmmaking, and in particular Indigenous cinema.
- There is often an expectation that Indigenous film must document struggle, denounce violence, or explain culture to outsiders, and while those forms are valid, their scope is also limited.
- Instead, workshop facilitators insisted that works of fiction, such as an Indigenous romance or a suspenseful comedy, can also be deeply impactful and meaningful.
- This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the author, not necessarily of Mongabay.
A machete is typically an instrument for clearing dense brush or, in a certain kind of movie, for fending off a terrifying monster. Yet, deep in the Atlantic Forest of Brazil’s Bahia state, I learned that a machete is also used for a much friendlier purpose: slicing green mangoes to eat with salt.
That simple, unexpected twist — where anticipated horror dissolves into communal joy — captures exactly what happened when we asked the students in the Indigenous Tupinambá villages of Serra do Padeiro and Tukum what kind of movies they liked. The room immediately buzzed with a rapid-fire list: K-dramas, slapstick comedies, high-speed action, or blood-chilling horror. Before anyone had even picked up a camera, the space was already overflowing with a multiplicity of cinematic worlds and different ideas about what a story could be.
I had traveled to southern Bahia in March 2026 with Indigenous filmmaker Olinda Tupinambá and a group of creatives. As a researcher at the University of London’s School of Advanced Study, I am co-developing our project titled “Environmental Education and Film in the Atlantic Forest: Eco-Activism Through Indigenous Perspectives” with support from the British Academy. Our goal was simple: to demystify filmmaking by using everyday smartphones as creative tools, and to challenge what audiences often assume about Indigenous cinema.
There is often an external expectation that Indigenous film must strictly document struggle, denounce violence, or carefully explain culture to outsiders. Those functions remain valid; however, our team of workshop facilitators — all of whom are Indigenous — insisted on something equally crucial: that an Indigenous romance or a suspenseful comedy can also be deeply political. Humor and horror aren’t escapes from reality; rather, they can be ways of organizing feelings, agency and imagination.
The workshops were full of laughter and hands-on labor. Natália Tupi guided the students through cinematography and editing; Karkará Tunga taught scriptwriting, direction and sound; and Ziel Karapotó led art direction. “Direction requires an active voice,” the facilitators repeatedly reminded them, urging the youth not to be afraid to say when a scene wasn’t working and to repeat it until it felt right.
Local support was essential: in Serra do Padeiro, Glicéria Tupinambá contributed to storytelling while Jéssica Tupinambá managed production. In Tukum, Chief Ramon and Nádia Akawã provided vital support. The steady rhythm of community care, particularly the everyday acts of hospitality and shared meals maintained in the kitchen, sustained the technical work. Emma Latham Phillips documented the process through photography, while Marcília Cavalcante filmed the behind-the-scenes footage as smartphones helped turn the workshop into a space of collective image-making.
This creative freedom sparked brilliant tonal shifts, best seen in Mango with Salt, the short film created in Serra do Padeiro. The script follows two teenagers, the curious Yuna and the fearful Guará, who wander into the forest looking for better guava. Suddenly, distant screams echo through the trees. Panic sets in.
Yuna runs home and returns with her older sister, Jacy, gripping her grandfather’s machete for protection. But the anticipated horror dissolves into a joyful twist: the mysterious screams are just relatives swinging from a vine and diving into the river. The tension of the forest seamlessly gives way to the sensory textures of ordinary Tupinambá life.
In Tukum, the storytelling took a different shape with The Harvest, in which siblings Narã and Maya head into the woods at dusk to collect jenipapo fruits to make body paint. Narã feels a sudden unease, having forgotten his tobacco, the necessary offering for protection. Maya dismisses his worry and carelessly tosses down far more fruit than they need.
The consequences don’t arrive through a preachy narrator but through the unseen, watchful presence of the Kaapora, a living entity in Tupinambá cosmology linked to the protection of the forest. Angered by the pair’s excess, the forest guardian follows them, its voice calling out to Maya until she drops the extra fruit. By the time Narã helps her recover from the shock, they walk out of the trees carrying only the five jenipapos they originally came for.
Defending a threatened biome does not always arrive in the form of a formal lesson. Sometimes it takes shape through fabulation, laughter, and the leap from a vine into the water. Perhaps that was the point: not to reduce the forest to explanation, but to leave with the right number of jenipapos — and enough salt for the mangoes.
Jamille Pinheiro Dias directs the Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS) and co-directs the Environmental Humanities Research Hub at the Institute of Languages, Cultures and Societies (ILCS), School of Advanced Study, University of London, where she also works as a senior lecturer. Watch a video of the workshop here at her LinkedIn account.
Banner image: Filmmaker and workshop facilitator Natália Tupi guiding student Maicon Santos in audiovisual techniques during the workshop in the Tukum village, Tupinambá de Olivença Territory (Bahia, Brazil). Image courtesy of Emma Latham Phillips.
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