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Afro-Brazilian Religions Come to Life on the Big Screen

Kelly HayesImagine Professor Kelly Hayes’ excitement when she learned that her documentary on Afro-Brazilian religions would be shown 5 times at the largest film festival in South America, Festival do Rio—an event that receives massive media attention and attracts hundreds of thousands of spectators.

And, Hayes got to be there. “I attended three of the five screenings of the film in Rio and all of them were full,” says the associate professor of religious studies in the IU School of Liberal Arts at IUPUI. “The opening night show sold out, which amazed me, since the film is an educational documentary, a genre that appeals to relatively few people.”

The fall showings of Slaves of the Saints together with the publication of Holy Harlots: Femininity, Sexuality, and Black Magic in Brazil (University of California Press) in February 2011 are the culmination of years of research on Afro-Brazilian religions.

As a graduate student Hayes began a now more than decade and a half long exploration of how African traditions brought to the New World developed and changed, particularly in Brazil which has a especially strong African heritage.

Helio Possessed“The Afro-Brazilian pantheon reflects Brazil’s multicultural heritage and includes Catholic saints, African ancestral divinities, and the spirits of black slaves, indigenous Indians, and other archetypal folk characters from Brazilian folk history,” reports Hayes. “The basic idea in Afro-Brazilian religions is that various spiritual beings are active in the lives of humans, for good or ill.”

“Unlike Christianity, which posits a radical separation of the spiritual and the physical world, in Afro-Brazilian religions, the spiritual is made manifest in the physical and so sensual and material elements are fundamental,” says Hayes.

She determined that producing a documentary was a must to fully capture the richness of the religions which provide a deep physical experience of music, singing, drumming, dance, elaborate ceremonies and costumes, complex altars, incense, and material offerings.

Kelly Hayes and VikDeveloping long-standing relationships over 15 years of traveling to and living in Brazil is what enabled Hayes and her collaborator on the documentary, Catherine Crouch, to capture on film sacred rituals and other activities that outsiders are not usually permitted to see.

The documentary focuses in particular on devotion to a group of unruly spirits often are associated with “black magic.” The film combines footage of ceremonies and personal interviews with practitioners, many of whom are women living on the working class outskirts of Rio de Janeiro.

“The religious practices in which I am most interested frequently have been labeled black magic by outsiders (and even some insiders),” Hayes says. “There is a long history to this since African-derived religious practices in Brazil, as in the US, were feared and denigrated as black magic by whites and this stigma has persisted. Calling something black magic is a way of saying that it is not authentic religion, but rather something illicit, immoral or malevolent—whether or not this is actually the case.”

Red PadilhaeditThe film and Holy Harlots reveal everyday aspects of how Afro-Brazilian religions are lived out and are authentic and meaningful spiritual practices for hundreds of thousands of people.

“What I heard again and again from audiences at the festival was how much they appreciated that the film let people speak for themselves and that it portrayed the religion in a very matter-of-fact way without sensationalizing it,” reports Hayes.

Seeing the results of 10 years of research and two years of editing on the big screen was a thrill for the professor. But, she says, “It was even more exciting to have a group of people engaged by and interested in talking about it.”

[Slaves of the Saints trailer] [Holy Harlots information]