Portico Gallery will be hosting the UK screening of the Eskawata Kayawai feature documentary. Ninawà Pai da Mata and Director Patrick Belem will introduce the film and host a Q & A.
Film Synopsis:
In the heart of the Amazon Rainforest, the Kaxinawá people (self-claimed Huni Kuin, “true people”) are experiencing their cultural and spiritual renaissance. After decades of slavery during the rubber plantation era, they were captured in the forests with dogs, marked with numbers and forbidden to speak their language and live their culture. It took more than 20 years of hard work, prayers, and cultural strengthening undertaken by the spiritual leader Ninawá Pai da Mata so that his people could return to their ancestral way of life.
In this feature film, we are taken by the villagers to the cacophony of the forest, the beauty and the simplicity of everyday life, the enchantments of the forest medicines and the effort of what it takes for a tribe to rediscover themselves in communion with nature. Such a powerful return home is an example for the world, especially in the critical moment we live, proving that it is possible to rescue ancestry and revolutionise everyday life to be in harmony with the planet.
Following the screening, there will be live traditional native music performed by Ninawa Pai Da Mata, the Chief of the Novo Futuro Village of the Huni Kuin people in Acre, Brazil, who comes from an unbroken lineage of powerful spiritual leaders (Pajes). His name means Forest Man or Father of the Forest, and his presence is truly something special. Since he started travelling in 2013, he quickly became known as one of the original rockstars from the forest and has touched and inspired many people worldwide.
He is a gifted musician and captivates people wherever he goes with his charisma and power and sharing his message of nature, love and humility. He has appeared at the Glastonbury Festival and Medicine Festival in the UK and is one of the foremost spiritual leaders of the annual Aniwa gathering in the USA. He will be joined by two of his sons, Marciel and Yube.
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