Janaína Oliveira

Encruzilhadas das águas / Water Crossings, routes for the Black Brazilian Cinemas’ experiences

“We are always in the middle of the journey,” says essayist and poet Dionne Brand in A Map to the Door of No Return. The crossing of the Atlantic marks Black people's historical and aesthetic experiences, bringing fragmentation and incompleteness, but also the crossroads that shape lives in the African diasporas. The Encruzilhadas das águas / Water Crossings program offers a path for thinking about the Atlantic routes that shape Black cinemas in Brazil, proposing the encounter of contemporary works with Zózimo Bulbul's pioneering film, in a kind of cinematographic panorama through the waters. 

Janaína Oliveira hold a Ph.D. in History and is a professor at the Federal Institute of Rio de Janeiro (IFRJ). She is Head Programmer at the Zózimo Bulbul Black Film Festival in Rio de Janeiro and on the programming committees for FINCAR (Festival Internacional de Cinema de Realizadoras) and International Women Filmmakers Festival in Recife. 

Film Program:
Alma no Olho (Soul in the eye), Zózimo Bulbul (Brazil, 1973, 13 min)
NoirBlue, Displacents of a dance, Ana Pi, Brazil, 2018, 27 min.
Se o mar tivesse varandas (If the sea had balconies), Aline Motta, Brazil, 2017, 9 min.

Mal di Mare (Seasick), João Vieira Torres, France/Brazil, 2021, 15 min.

Mar de Dentro, Lia Letícia, Brazil, 2024, 8 min. 

De um lado do Atlântico (On One Side of the Atlantic), Milena Manfredini, Brazil, 2017, 7 min.

Part of the series: Black Atlantic Cinema

“Seeing oneself through the eyes … of a nation that looked back in contempt”: This is how W.E.B. DuBois described the “double consciousness” which marks the life of subordinated groups in oppressive societies. Moving beyond the frame of the nation state and national cinemas, the concept of “Black Atlantic Cinema” considers a practice of film which spans the space of three continents and a history of several centuries. In the Lecture & Film series “Black Atlantic Cinema” scholars, curators and artists approach the ways in which filmmakers deal with the challenge of double consciousness across the Black Atlantic, from Africa to Brazil and the Caribbean to (post)colonial Europe.

The series is curated by Didi Cheeka, Daniel Fairfax and Vinzenz Hediger with support from Feven Haile

Organized by the Institut für Theater-, Film- und Medienwissenschaft of Goethe Universtät and DFF in cooperation with ConTrust – Trust and Conflict in Political Life and supported by the Hessische Film- und Medienakademie, Zentrum für Interdisziplinäre Afrika Studien der Goethe Universität and Georg Foster Forum of Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz.

All talks in English. All events at Kino im Deutschen Filmmuseum, Schaumainkai 41, 60596 Frankfurt am Main