Study Guide
Grades 9-12, College, Adult
Directed by Adrian Cowell
DVD Purchase $79, Rent $45
US Release Date: 1999
Copyright Date: 1999
DVD ISBN: 1-59458-690-X
VHS ISBN: 1-56029-794-8
Subjects
Amazon
Anthropology
Brazil
Developing World
Forests and Rainforests
Geography
Globalization
History
Human Rights
Humanities
Indigenous Peoples
Latin American Studies
Social Justice
Awards and Festivals
Latin American Studies Association Award of Merit in Film
Council on Foundations Film & Video Festival
First Peoples' Festival, Montreal
Return from Extinction
The Panara return to their ancestral forest home.
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"An eye-opening...story of a lost world and culture that, happily, has an optimistic outcome." Daily Telegraph (London) |
This film tells the remarkable recent history of the hiding Panara tribe, who are descended from a large tribe known in the 18th century as the Southern Kayapo. They were attacked so often by the Portuguese that they were believed to have become extinct. But they fled into the deepest part of the forest, and killed all strangers on sight.
With extraordinary footage in the 1960s, we watch as Claudio Villas Boas, and his team from Brazil's Indian Protection Service, make the first patient attempts to contact the Panara before a planned development road exposes them to 'civilization'. Then, in spite of Claudio's efforts, we are witnesses in the 1970s as the tribe is virtually wiped out by diseases contracted when two huge roads opened up their lands to an influx of rubber tappers and gold diggers. With the aid of his brother Orlando, Claudio Villas Boas manages to fly 79 survivors out to the Xingu National Park.
Now twenty years later, the Brazilian government has recognized the legitimacy of the Panara's claim to a half million hectare block of their ancestral homeland, and they are going back home.
Other titles in the series are:
The Fate of the Kidnapper - The cycle of revenge following first contact with the Uru Eu Wau Wau.
Fragments of a People - Frantic efforts to find the Ava-Canoeiro before their land is flooded for a new dam.
Reviews
"Documentaries do not come better than this."
"Adrian Cowell's trilogy was 30 years in the making and it's been worth the wait...the denouement plays out like Jacobean tragedy and...is no less gripping."
"A powerful documentary series about the Amazonian Indians, may prove to be one of the last records of their way of life."
"An extraordinary achievement."
"The most successful of the three (programs), both in presenting the story of the people of the Panara tribe...and in placing it in historical, cultural and political perspective. It