Pulitzer Center Helps To Bring Films About the Amazon to the People Who Live There

Image

Showing films that feature the Amazon as the protagonist and are watched and discussed by people who live close to the forest, but don't always recognize themselves in it. This was one of the motivations that brought the Stories from the Amazon Film Festival, promoted by the Pulitzer Center, to the states of Maranhão and Pará in Brazil.

Three cities—Imperatriz, Marabá, and Rondon do Pará—had screenings of documentaries and audiovisual productions that were focused on Amazon stories and issues that are underreported but are important for discussions about socio-environmental challenges.

Considered the “gateway” to the rainforest, Maranhão and Pará both exhibit high rates of deforestation. Out of the nine states that make up the Brazilian Legal Amazon, Pará has registered the worst deforestation since 2006, with a total of 172.400 km2 of forest cut down. On top of this, it faces problems with major infrastructure projects (such as hydroelectric dams and railroads), illegal mining, irregular markets for forest products, and violence over land disputes.

“We are changing the Amazon to such an extent that it may well cease to exist. Events such as the film festival, held together with local universities and organizations, lead us to think together with students and teachers about the region's social and environmental problems and how we can propose ways forward together,” said Maria Rosa Darrigo, the event’s organizer and a program manager at the Pulitzer Center.

In partnership with the Federal University of Maranhão and the Federal University of Southern and Southeastern Pará, the film festival featured sessions and debates involving the local community, teachers, students, and journalists. The audience learned about development models imposed on the region, threats to the people of the forest, and what they have to teach us in the fight against climate change.

“Even though we are at the beginning of what used to be forest and are close to Indigenous lands, the people here don't have a sense of identity with the Amazon and its heritage. We see media outlets in the country’s south and southeast talking about the Amazon, while here, in the very place where we should be dealing with the subject, we are not doing so. The film festival was very important for us to discuss this relationship,” explains Professor Elaine Javorski Souza, from the Federal University of Maranhão's Postgraduate Program in Communication.

Image

One of the documentaries screened at the festival was Relatos de um Correspondente da Guerra na Amazônia (Reports from a War Correspondent in the Amazon), directed by journalists Daniel Camargos and Ana Aranha, both from Repórter Brasil. The documentary was supported by the Pulitzer Center through the Rainforest Journalism Fund.

Released in 2023 during the first Histórias da Amazônia (Stories from the Amazon) film festival, which was organized by the Pulitzer Center at the Cinemateca Brasileira in São Paulo, Brazil, the film delves into the challenges faced by journalists who cover the violence against Indigenous communities. The documentary is based on the story of the murder of journalist Dom Phillips and Indigenous expert Bruno Pereira in an ambush in the Javari Valley, in the state of Amazonas.

“During the screening, the room was packed and the audience was engaged. The exchange of experiences was very interesting,” said Camargos, a 2023 Fellow in the Pulitzer Center’s Rainforest Investigations Network.

Among the other films that were screened were Pilotos da Amazônia (Pilots of the Amazon)—which includes testimonies from pilots who fly illegally in the region working for criminal activities such as logging, drug trafficking, and gold mining—and Pandemia e Fake News no Alto Xingu (Pandemic and Fake News in the Upper Xingu), about the impact of fake news that was spread during the COVID-19 pandemic.

With his experience in directing the documentary and investigative reporting about the Amazon, Camargos also taught journalism students in the Journalistic Narrative Workshop, a Pulitzer Center initiative that’s in partnership with the Federal University of Maranhão during the Communication Congress (SIMCOM).

According to Camargos, the workshop gave a breakdown of how to investigate stories published by Repórter Brasil, and explained how to gain access to public data and how to understand maps. Among the materials was the multimedia series Ogronegócio, the Militia and Coup-mongering, the result of a 6,000-kilometer journey throughout the states of Mato Grosso and Pará in order to understand the alliance between Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and the violent wing of agribusiness in the Amazon.

“No matter how much we show students the issues involved in investigative journalism, sometimes for them it just sometimes seems like a distant reality, with it being hard to get the resources they need to make their investigations viable. Daniel came along and showed us that there are now ways of funding, such as through the Pulitzer Center. It helps to awaken an entrepreneurial spirit in the students,” Souza said.

Leia em português.