THE RIVER - Short film screening & conversation with Priscila Tapajowara

This event is hosted by Decolonise Sociology, a staff-student group founded in 2017 to advance decolonial agendas both within and from the Department of Sociology at the University of Cambridge.

About the short film

When we think of the Amazon, we often think of pristine, wild nature. What we don’t expect to see is vast ferries and barges. But that’s exactly what the Tapajó people in the Brazilian Amazon are seeing. Activist and filmmaker Priscila Tapajowara documents how modern transportation is impacting her community, as their river undergoes significant changes to make way for the shipping industry.

About the filmmaker

Priscila Tapajowara is an indigenous woman from the Amazon biome, born in the ancestral territory of the Tapajó people, Santarém, Pará. She was chosen by EFE and Sanchamama as one of the 100 Latinos most committed to climate action in 2023 and 2024. Since 2013 she has been showing the struggle and culture of indigenous peoples through photography and in 2018 she graduated in Audiovisual Production from FAPCOM College, becoming the first indigenous woman to graduate from the institution. In the indigenous communication organisation Mídia Indígena she serves as president and vice-president of the Território da Artes Institute.

About the conversation

After a screening of 'The River', Pricila's five-minute film, Priscila and Tom Kissock-Mamede, a PhD candidate in Sociology whose research focuses on indigenous livestream activism, will be in conversation. They will discuss how the film and its production constructs new epistemological bridges between academic and ancestral ways of knowing, exploring questions like: does the film show a new way of working together with film crews and researchers in the Amazon? What are the implications for non-indigenous researchers and filmmakers working with indigenous people? Are there epistemological prerequisites that researchers should engage with before carrying out research in such contexts? Mídia Indígena and Priscila Tapajowara's approach to these questions have profound implications for disciplinary sociology.