Documentary by Camila Freitas
The film opens with a grandmother peering out of her treehouse lookout onto a vast field, speculating about what she will plant when they settle. Her wisdom flows from her mouth as she reorganises her grandson’s crop plans and we find ourselves situated on a land that is under re-occupation, a returning of sorts. The film follows the landless workers movement as they expropriate their land from corporations. Set in Santa Helena, the film focuses on an allotment formerly owned by a company embroiled in legal battles over tax fraud and bankruptcy. In a context where land reform had once been possible the organisation’s resistance unfolds with determination and care.
The film is a beautiful representation of grassroots organisation which does not militarise the movement or exaggerate its message of resistance. A contemplative approach with designed pauses between scenes, it resists the ideological gaze that fashions political messages for consumption. Creating such relational space for viewers relieves the film from the pressure to adhere to formulaic dramatic arcs that simplify emotional responses in audiences. Landless demonstrates the democratic processes involved in the complex grassroots organisation which grows and has maintained its power. The filmmaker described her motives and style for filming as looking-in through the movement’s perspective and contrasts from the media’s representation as a peasant insurrection. The landless workers movement is well known in Brazil and the film acts as an artistic representation as Freitas was interested in the architecture of the place and the land’s terraforming, from a wild state to commercial farming allotments and its final organic shape in the hands of the landless movement. Gates and fences give way to tents and pathways are carved by footsteps rather than bulldozers. The land itself becomes a character, bearing the marks of past exploitation and present regeneration. She also mention how she wanted to show how the story had poverty, misery but it wasn’t a story of success, it was a story of a movement building, or a movement subsisting, there wasn’t such a focus on a narrative arc which said that they won, rather the story showed how they built themselves.
Shot over 4 years she says the film was over 300 hours, in the q/a afterwards she described how she grew up in the movement, although it wasn’t clear if she was living on the occupied land however she clearly had emotional bonds and connections as the organisation contacted her and they started talking. For her there was a lot of negotiation of what could be kept in the film and what should be removed, she described that the organisation was very complex and that this interested her in developing an antithesis the media’s presentation of the landless workers movement.