News Release

CHAPEL HILL -- Brazilian filmmaker and television producer Joel Zito Araujo will be a special guest at a film festival taking place Monday (Nov. 1) through Nov. 10 on the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill campus.

The annual Diaspora Festival of Black and Independent Films, sponsored by UNC’s Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History, will showcase nine movies whose themes are as diverse as hip-hop, racial equality in Brazil and the Black Power movement. The film series will include a variety of films from Africa, North America and South America.

The festival, titled "From Bahia to Brooklyn" for a state in northeastern Brazil and the famous New York borough, will include the N.C. premiere of Araujo’s film, "Filhas do Vento," or "Daughters of the Wind." The film, Araujo’s most recent, has won critical acclaim and features the largest Afro-Brazilian cast ever in a Brazilian film. The only prior showing of the film in the United States was at a film festival in New York earlier this year.

Araujo, the recipient of many Brazilian film awards and producer of 24 documentaries, and his wife, actress Maria Ceica, will be available to speak to UNC classes during their visit. Ceica is well-known for her roles in the Brazilian films "O Testamento do Senhor Napumoceno" and "Orfeu."

The festival begins with the Monday (Nov. 1) premiere of "Daughters of the Wind," at 7:30 p.m. in the Frank Porter Graham Student Union Film Auditorium. The story concerns love and salvation between sisters, mothers and daughters and is set in a small inner-state town of Minas Gerais, where the ghosts of slavery and racism underline the characters’ dramas in a subtle and powerful manner. A discussion with Araujo will follow.

Other films, all shown in the Stone Center’s Hitchcock Multipurpose Room, will be:

• "O Testamento do Senhor Napumoceno," or "The Last Will and Testament of Mr. Napumoceno," at noon Tuesday (Nov. 2) in Portuguese with English subtitles. Featuring a mostly Brazilian cast, including Ceica, "O Testamento" focuses on the diversity of culture in Cape Verde. This film has been compared to "Citizen Kane."
  
• "Denying Brazil," at 7 p.m. Wednesday (Nov. 3) in Portuguese with English subtitles. This documentary film is about the taboos, stereotypes and struggles of black actors in Brazilian television’s popular "soaps."
  
• "Lost Boys of Sudan," at noon Thursday (Nov. 4) in Dinka with English subtitles. "Lost Boys of Sudan" is a feature-length documentary that follows two Sudanese refugees on an extraordinary journey from Africa to America. Orphaned as young boys in one of Africa's cruelest civil wars, Peter Dut and Santino Chuor survived lion attacks and militia gunfire to reach a refugee camp in Kenya along with thousands of other children. From there, remarkably, they were chosen to come to America. Safe at last from physical danger and hunger, a world away from home, they find themselves confronted with the abundance and alienation of contemporary American suburbia. This film is being shown is association with UNC-TV.
  
• Double feature: "The Exception and the Rule," at 7 p.m. Thursday (Nov. 4) in Portuguese with English subtitles, followed by the film "Afroargentinos" in Spanish with English subtitles. "The Exception and the Rule" is a documentary about an unknown court victory that illustrates how the Brazilian judicial system recognized a company’s prejudice and racism in a country where such realities are usually dismissed as atypical. "Afroargentinos" is a film that unearths the hidden history of black people in Argentina and their contributions to Argentine culture and society, from the slaves who fought in the revolutionary wars against Spain to the contemporary struggles of black Argentines against racism and marginalization.
  
• Double feature: "The Underground Railroad in Mexico" at 7 p.m. Nov. 8, followed by "ANC Hip-Hop Revolution." "The Underground Railroad in Mexico" is a short documentary (work in progress) that investigates the members of the Afro-Mexican community of Oaxaca. Through interviews, the filmmakers are able to understand the complex and complementary relations that have existed between indigenous communities and Afro-Mexicans for more than 300 years. A discussion session will follow. "ANC Hip-Hop Revolution" is a film about Cuban underground hip-hop group Anónimo Consejo (ANC). The film shows the unglamorous side of hip-hop as the duo is captured rehearsing for a big show, rapping to a cheap stereo and using a TV remote as a microphone.
  
• "African-American," at noon Nov. 10. "African-American" focuses on the relationship between African and African-American students on U.S. college campuses.

For more information, contact Antoinette Parker at (919) 962-9001 or visit http://ibiblio.org/shscbch/. This film festival is sponsored with Chamas Brazilian restaurant.

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Stone Center contact: Antoinette Parker, (919) 962-9001

News Services contact: Deb Saine, (919) 962-8415 or deborah_saine@unc.edu