Memory, Myth, and Mediation: Decolonial Film Practices in Amazonian Ethnography

Abstract (English)

This paper reflects on the production process of the film *The Enchanted Words of the Hupd'äh of the Amazon – Masters of Knowledge, narrated by Renato Athias*, developed from my ethnographic fieldwork and personal archives with the Hupd'äh people. The film seeks to mediate memory, mythological narrative, and Indigenous epistemologies for a broad, non-specialist audience through first-person narration and edited audiovisual sequences—strategies rooted in visual anthropology. It explores the potentials and challenges of creating a decolonial visual narrative by returning to past ethnographic encounters and reactivating them through contemporary audiovisual forms.
In this context, the paper contributes to current debates on the decolonization of ethnographic film archives. It critically engages with the historical entanglement of ethnographic film with institutional and scientific ideologies shaped by colonial power structures (Chakrabarty 2000; Mignolo 2011), and addresses how technical and narrative decisions have perpetuated epistemic imperialism and Western-centric framings. Drawing on recent scholarship (Schneider 2021; Groo 2019), it highlights how digitization and access infrastructures have enabled new forms of restitution, recognizing audiovisual materials as cultural heritage and tools for revitalizing memory within Indigenous communities.
The film becomes both an experiment and testimony in returning these collections—photographs, recordings, and filmed interviews—to the Hupd'äh, situating the archive as a living, relational space. It invites a broader rethinking of authenticity, “ethnographic truth,” and the role of visual media in producing cultural knowledge. Inspired by foundational works, such as Malinowski’s photographic essays, this project revisits the visual as both method and critique. Ultimately, the paper argues for reimagining ethnographic film through formal, stylistic, and epistemological experimentation, affirming the urgency of decolonial methodologies that restore Indigenous voice, agency, and ontological presence within anthropological storytelling.