Sao Paulo
The Brasília Festival decided not to screen the documentary “Raoni: An Unlikely Friendship” after the indigenous leadership severed ties with Belgian filmmaker JeanPierre Dutilleux. The film would conclude the festival program on Saturday (16).
However, due to the dispute, the organizers chose not to show the footage. “I just wouldn't cancel the film if either of them were here to present it. Otherwise the controversy would gain importance, not the film,” Anna Karina de Carvalho, artistic director of the event, told the newspaper O Globo.
As the title suggests, the film is about the friendship between Chief Raoni Metuktire and the film director. They became closer when the Belgian came to Brazil in the 1970s to make an ethnographic film in the Amazon rainforest.
At that time, a group of Kayapó indigenous people threatened to kill the filmmaker after mistaking him for one of the road construction workers. Raoni intervened for Dutilleux's life.
The partnership served to leverage Raoni's influence and the work of Dutilleux, who was nominated for an Oscar in 1979 for a documentary about the shaman.
However, this month it was revealed that the pair had split.
According to the Associated Press news agency, Raoni and people close to the boss said they had long suspected that Dutilleux was not passing on the collected funds to the Kayapó and that he was exploiting his colleague's image to boost his film career.
According to the indigenous leader, the director transferred only a fraction of what he had promised to finance social projects. Dutilleux denied this to the agency and attributed Raoni's statements to his advanced age. He also said that he doesn't care about money.