Tupi or Not Tupi: Cannibals vs. Vampires

The second cycle presented by Punto de Vista in its 7th edition explores cannibalism in culture and film. Born in Brazil with Oswald de Andrade’s “Cannibal Manifesto” (1928), the cannibal paradox has developed to encompass fascinating forms of non-fiction film that explore culture and identity clashes without showing cannibals but exercises in cannibalism, vampirisation, or anthropophagy instead: that is, by absorbing, digesting, and processing the culture of the invaders, mixing it with the local culture, and putting victimisation aside to proudly claim a new, necessarily hybrid, identity. The films produced under the spell of this paradoxical impulse is fascinating, contradictory, all-engulfing, and disturbing, as shown by the films to be screened in this cycle that come from the US, Australia, Finland, France, Colombia and, of course, Brazil.