After the silence

(Depois do silêncio)

Based on the book Torto Arado by Itamar Vieira Junior
published by LeYa

Slavery, at least in its large-scale industrial form, as part of a colonial project, is generally considered today as something from another era, a deplorable chapter in history that has been closed. 

In After the Silence / Depois do silêncio Brazilian theater and filmmaker Christiane Jatahy connects it to today, zooming in on its huge impact on the world we live in and its geopolitical realities, on the personal lives of many millions of inhabitants of this planet unrooted by history, on their quest of a territory – in its most concrete sense of a land, but also in its broadest definition of an identity, as a person, a community, a culture.

After the Silence / Depois do silêncio unrolls around the fiction of Torto Arado (2019), the widely acclaimed novel by Itamar Vieira Junior, set in a rural context in the interior of Bahia.

It connects this unsettling fiction – narrated through the voices of three women against the background of their community’s struggle for land, freedom, and identity – to Cabra marcado para morrer, the famous documentary by Eduardo Coutinho and its unraveling of the story of João Pedro Teixeira, leader of a rural union assassinated in 1962; and to research based on fieldwork and interviews. 

A documentary/fiction, a play/film as an intimate account of this unresolved past that keeps repeating itself in the horrors of Bolsonaro’s Brazil and beyond. As an attempt to connect present to past, in the hope to clear a ground for the future.

After the Silence / Depois do silêncio is the third and final part of the trilogy of horror. 

In recent years, Brazil has begun a flirtation with an extreme right-wing regime, endangering the very recently conquered democracy. Faced with the urgency of the situation in her homeland, it was clear to Christiane Jatahy that her art – the expression of a continuous exploration of the boundaries between cinema and theater, between fiction and reality, between inertia and the need for change – would be a weapon in the struggles that would need to be fought.

In the first two chapters Entre chien et loup (premiered at the Avignon festival 2021,starting from the film Dogville), zooms in on the mechanisms of fascism. And Before the sky falls (created at the Schauspielhaus Zurich in October 2021) connects Shakespeare’s Macbeth to The Falling Sky by Davi Kopenawa and Bruce Albert to talk about the violence of toxic masculinity, the political power of patriarchy, and its inherent aggression against the feminine in all its emanations – women, children, and ultimately nature and the earth itself.

Closing the trilogy, After the Silence / Depois do silêncio speaks of the issues of race, the denial of history, territory, and resistance, revolution. Based on Itamar Vieira Junior’s novel Torto Arado, it marks Christiane Jatahy’s return to creating in Brazil, with Brazilian actresses, in Portuguese. After the Silence opened at the Wiener Festwochen, in Vienna, in June 2022.

With After the Silence / Depois do silêncio, Christiane Jatahy deepens her research into a theatrical and cinematographic language, exploring the tension lines between both art forms; between fiction and reality; between the local issues of her native Brazil and the way these are reverberations of global tendencies; between a profound preoccupation with the dark times both country and world are living and the hope that change might come. 

After the Silence / Depois do silêncio was created in Rio de Janeiro, and filmed in Bahia’s Chapada Diamantina, with the landscapes and characters of the novel Torto Arado.

Credits

Depois do silêncio (After the silence)
By Christiane Jatahy 

Based on the book “Torto arado” by Itamar Vieira Junior published by LeYa.
Creation and text Christiane Jatahy 
Artistic collaboration, set and light design Thomas Walgrave 
Photography and camera Pedro Faerstein
Original Music Vitor Araujo and Aduni Guedes
Sound design and mixing Pedro Vituri

Sound (movie) João Zula 
Edition (movie) Mari Becker and Paulo Camacho
Costumes Preta Marques 
Collaboration text Gal Pereira, Juliana França, Lian Gaia and Tatiana Salem Levy
Interlocution Ana Maria Gonçalves 
Video System Julio Parente 
Body preparation Dani Lima 
Direction assistance Caju Bezerra 
Camera assistance Suelen Menezes
Stage manager and sound operation Diogo Magalhães 
Light operation Leandro Barreto
Video operation Alan de Souza 
Production assistance Rio de Janeiro Divino Garcia 
Production management Rio de Janeiro Claudia Marques 
Administration Claudia Petagna
Production coordination and tour manager Henrique Mariano 

With
Gal Pereira, Juliana França, Caju Bezerra, Aduni Guedes
and, for the film, Lian Gaia and the participation of the residents of the communities of Remanso and Iúna -Chapada Dimantina/Bahia/Brazil

Containing references to, and images of “Cabra marcado para morrer” by Eduardo Coutinho, Mapa Filmes production

Production – Cia Vertice – Axis productions  

Coproduction – Schauspielhaus Zürich, Le CENTQUATRE-Paris, Odéon-Théâtre de l’Europe – Paris, Wiener Festwochen, Piccolo Teatro di Milano – Teatro d’Europa, Arts Emerson – Boston, Riksteatern-Sweden, Théâtre Dijon-Bourgogne CDN, Théâtre National Wallonie-Bruxelles, Théâtre Populaire Romand – Centre neuchâtelois de arts vivants La Chaux-de-fonds, DeSingel – Antwerp, Künstlerhaus Mousonturm – Frankfurt a.M., Temporada Alta Festival de tardor de Catalunya and Centro Dramatico National – Madrid.

Christiane Jatahy is an associate artist of the CENTQUATRE-PARIS, à l’Odéon-Théâtre de l’Europe, Schauspielhaus Zürich, Arts Emerson Boston and Piccolo Teatro di Milano – Teatro d’Europa. Cia Vertice is supported by Direction régionale des affaires culturelles d’Île-de-France – Ministère de la Culture France.

The tour is supported by the CENTQUATRE on the road

Casting

Juliana França was born and lives in Japeri, in the Baixada Fluminense in Rio De Janeiro. She is an actress, teacher, Master in Philosophy, researcher of performing arts and ethno-racial relations, and has been a member of the socio-cultural group Código for 16 years.

Caju Bezerra is an actress, theoretical researcher, and artist-educator. She researches the narratives, oralities and corporealities of the African diaspora in live arts. 

Gal Pereira is an actress from the quilombo of Remanso in the Chapada Diamantina, in Bahia. She has acted in two short films and one feature film, and produced and directed a musical event.

Aduni Guedes is a percussionist, music producer and researcher of the African diaspora, crossing ancestral tradition with contemporary music forms.

Lian Gaia is an indigenous woman born in the Atlantic Forest in a peripheral urban context. Graduated in psychology, she works in scene art. She is co-founder of Anauá Filmes, an activist producer for indigenous causes.