Holland Festival – Depois do silêncio – Christiane Jatahy

The silence that is imposed on Afro-descended and indigenous people,

Brazil was one of the last American countries to abolish slavery in 1888. One hundred and thirty-six years later, many citizens are still exploited, discriminated and robbed of their land. Together with three actresses and in her unique visual language, associate artist Christiane Jatahy explores the effect of Brazil’s violent past and reality today.

One of the ways she does this is by using as a basis the internationally acclaimed 2018 novel Torto Arado (translated in English as Crooked Plow) by Itamar Vieira Junior about two sisters, Bibiana and Belonísia, who are driven apart as a result of inequality. Jatahy was also inspired by Eduardo Coutinho’s iconic documentary film Twenty Years Later (1984) about the murder of Brazilian peasant leader João Pedro Teixeira.

Working with the Afro-Brazilian and indigenous communities of Remanso and Iúna—Chapada Dimantina in the mountainous Bahia hinterland, Jatahy shows the despair and resolve of the original inhabitants. Blending theatre and film, past and present, fiction and reality, she tells the story of two sisters for whom freedom is but a charade in the aftermath of their ancestors’ enslavement. 

‘The title refers to the silence that is imposed on Afro-descended and indigenous people, robbed of their land and of a space in which to tell their stories. Depois do silêncio is the possibility of a change, the seeds of revolution.’ - Christiane Jatahy (at Bruzz)