Winners
Winner 2004
Kumaré Txicao
KUMARE TXICAO, 27, of the Ikpeng indigenous nation in Brazil, received US$10,000 for his project, “The Day I Saw the White Man”. Our seven-member jury found that Kumare’s project captures a crucial moment in the Ikpeng’s struggle to win back their ancestral land. His story, told with a mixture of sadness and humour, presents “the other side” of history, an indigenous filmmaker telling the story of his own people
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
Whites first made contact with the Ikpeng in 1965. There were only about a hundred Ikpeng left at the time, living on the banks of the Jatoba River in Mato Grosso state. Forty years after this fateful encounter, Ikpeng elders still remember clearly what happened. They talk with a longing for the time before they were “discovered” and lived totally by their own means on their own land.
Kumare’s film will be the Ikpeng’s first opportunity to tell their own story, to make the rest of us understand the dramatic importance of that first meeting with whites. For once, whites represent “the other”, a much needed twist in documentary filmmaking.
At first, we were surprised to receive the grant from the Alter-Ciné Foundation because we didn’t realise our story might interest people in a far-off country who knew nothing about us. This motivated us to pursue our work. Materially speaking, it allowed us to remunerate the community for participating in this film. Our parents and grandparents, who are also the narrators of the film, guided our choice of scenes to be dramatised. They also directed these sequences. It was important for us to remunerate them for their participation. “My First Contact” is a collective effort and I feel that is where its strength lies. Our thanks to the Alter-Ciné Foundation for having believed in and supported our project
– Kumare Ikpeng