Provoking Film/Complicating Hierarchy

Abstract

In 2014 and 2017, I accompanied the filmmakers Philipp Hartmann, Danilo Carvalho, and Helena Wittmann to the Sertão in the northeast of Brazil. In this desert-like region we gathered the material for Virar mar (2020), an experimental documentary about the meaning of water – its uses, politics, metaphorical potential, and (his)stories. My role in the team may be best described as a ‘film set ethnographer’ whose notes and observations were meant to reflect more on the journey, the film process, and perhaps even lend inspiration to the film itself. The encounter with another film team complicated the distinction between life and filmmaking as well as between fiction and reality. Thus, political, cultural, and aesthetic hierarchies also became blurred. By re-examining and reassembling the raw material we gathered on this journey – film, video, sound, and text – I hope to provoke sensual as well as critical readings of our findings.