CCCADI will be screening Afro-Atlantic Legacies along with a conversation with Professor Xavier Vatin and Dr. Ken Dossar.
Synopsis
In 1940, a black American linguist, Lorenzo Dow Turner, came to Brazil to study the African languages still spoken and sung in the Candomblés of Bahia. Over the course of seven months of intensive research, Turner finds and records the most emblematic religious figures of the time: Martiniano do Bonfim, Menininha do Gantois, Joãozinho da Goméia, Manoel Falefá, among other distinguished representatives of Afro-Brazilian religions. The recordings and photographs by Turner in Bahia - whose aim was to show the linguistic relationship with Gullah, a language he had studied in the 1930s and which is still spoken today in the south of the United States, along the coasts of Georgia and South Carolina, by descendants of slaves in a situation of cultural and geographical isolation – serve as a pioneering and unique witness to the presence and preservation of African languages in Brazil and the Americas. Presenting rare images and sounds, the feature-length documentary Memórias Afro-Atlânticas follows the footsteps of Lorenzo Turner and revisits the Candomblé terreiros recorded by him almost 80 years later in search of memories and remnants still alive.
BIO – Professor Xavier Vatin
Dr. Xavier Vatin is an ethnomusicologist and Associate Professor of Anthropology at Universidade Federal do Recôncavo da Bahia (UFRB), Brazil. He has a B.A. in Musicology at Université de Nice Sophia Antipolis, an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Social Anthropology at Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS, Paris). His research is focused on Afro-Brazilian religions, ethnomusicology, visual anthropology, and Afro-Atlantic cultures and languages.
He is author and co-author of several books, book chapters, journal articles, CDs and documentary films in Brazil, France, the United States, Switzerland, and Germany. Dr. Vatin served as a visiting professor at Indiana University Bloomington (2012), Université Lumière Lyon 2 (2013), and Université Côte d’Azur (2018). In 2017, his “Afro-Atlantic Legacies” project, dedicated to the repatriation of African American linguist Lorenzo Turner’s 1940 Bahia recordings was awarded the IV Prêmio Afro (Prêmio Nacional de Expressões Culturais Afro-Brasileiras) in Rio de Janeiro.
In 2019, Afro-Atlantic Legacies became a documentary film and Dr. Vatin’s ongoing research was awarded an Institute for Advanced Study’s Summer Repository Research Fellowship at Indiana University. In 2020, the second volume of this project will be released, including a book, a 4-CD set, and a second documentary film.
Year: 2019
Country: Brazil
Genre: Documentary, Color/B&W
Total length: 76 minutes
Language: Portuguese with English subtitles
Director: Gabriela Barreto
Executive Producer: Cassio Nobre
Script and research: Xavier Vatin and Cassio Nobre
BIO Gabriela Barreto (Director)
Gabriela Barreto is a young Black Brazilian awarded director. Her work is focused on social, environmental aspects of Brazilian society, with an emphasis on Afro-Brazilian culture.
BIO Cassio Nobre (Executive Producer and script)
Cassio Nobre is a musician as well as a music and audiovisual producer. He is Director at Couraça Cultural Creations, executive producer and coordinator of Afro-Atlantic Legacies project. He has a Bachelor’s degree in History and PhD in Ethnomusicology, both from Federal University of Bahia, Brazil. His research is focused on Afro-Brazilian music, phonographic production and intangible