Uirá, um Índio em Busca de Deus / Uirá, an Indian on the Search for God (2025 restoration Rai Teche)

Gustavo Dahl: Uirá, um Índio em Busca de Deus / Uirá, an Indian on the Search for God (BR 1973) with Érico Vidal (Uirá).

Uirá, intiaani Jumalaa etsimässä / Uirá, an Indian in God's Forest.

    BR 1973. Prod.: Alter Filmes, Ltda, Rai. 

    Director: Gustavo Dahl. Sog.: based on the anthropological study Uirá vai ao encontro de Maira – as experiências de um índio urubu-kaapor que saiu à procura de Deus (1957) di Darcy Ribeiro. F.: Rogério Noel - colour. M.: Gilberto Santeiro, Emma Menenti. Scgf.: Francesco Tullio Altan. Int.: Érico Vidal (Uirá), Aria Maria Magalhães (Katai), Gustavo Dahl, João Capitão.

    86 min

    In Portuguese and Tupi.

    Restored in 4K in 2025 by Rai Teche in collaboration with Rai Cultura ed Educational/Fuori orario. Cose (mai) viste at Rai Teche – Digitalizzazione, supporti e preservazione di Torino laboratory, from a 16 mm positive print

    DCP with subtitles in English by Rai Pubblica Utilitá from Rai Teche

    Il Cinema Ritrovato, Bologna 2025: Cinemalibero.

    Introduced by Cecilia Cenciarelli.

    Viewed at Cinema Jolly with e-subtitles in Italian, 28 June 2025.

From the series: Latin America Seen by Its Directors.

Glauber Rocha (as quoted in Bologna 2025): "Cineanthropology – a modern linguistic practice par excellence. Uirá, the story of an Indian who sets out in search of God, a rare cosmogony in our cinema, is a film structured in medium shots, according to the rhythms of a synthesis produced by the dialectical montage of humanists like Rossellini and Bresson and historical materialists like Brecht. Flowing without the phenomenological accidents of a naturalistic river, Uirá, from the pure theory of universal cinema to cultural specificity, closes another cycle of modern Brazilian cinema, which began after 1968 with another Indianist film: Como era gostoso o meu francês, by Nelson Pereira dos Santos … Uirá masterfully employs the general theories of Cinema Novo and reincorporates the actor into reality, opens up avenues that eschew the complacent confusion between repression and creation, and points to the real as an object revealed by discourse that integrates scientific information and poetic transcendence. Uirá is the funeral of a civilisation that – as Sérgio Buarque de Hollanda recalls – did not have the strength to mobilise its own history. As a result, the Indians become the enemies of another History, which sings its glories in blood. In Tupi and Portuguese – since the actors play in a language stripped of all conceptual drama – Uirá laments, with the rigour of the moralists, the lack of generosity of those who have conquered in the name of the Faith and the Empire. Gustavo plays an official of the Service for the Protection of Indians: his speech, with the humility of great artists who are not ashamed of contracting the diseases of their people, attributes violence to its perpetrators. With Indian civilisation dead, the humanists offer the survivors the small comforts of their society. Uirá jumps from his car into the sea, swims like Taris in a journey that begins with Jean Vigo and ends in the Homeric myth of the brave warriors resurrected." Glauber Rocha, Reviewing Histories: Selections from New Latin American Cinema, Hallwalls Inc. New York, 1987

AA: Before becoming a key force in Brazilian film culture, Gustavo Dahl was a student with the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia and Jean Rouch in the early 1960s. This formation led to Uirá, um Índio em Busca de Deus, a work of cineanthropology and ethnofiction.

The movie starts in 1939 in Maranhão among the Urubu-Kaapor tribe. Misfortune hits the family of Uirá (Érico Vidal) and Maíra (Ana Maria Magalhães) whose firstborn son dies "of White illness". The film begins with his funeral ceremony. Uirá is crushed and seeks Shaman advice. The family (including two children) sets on a quest of a "land without evil", traverses the interior of Maranhão in search of the Tupi creator divinity and arrives in the capital São Luis.

The culture clash is extreme, Uirá's family is harassed, split and jailed, but under the orders of President Getúlio Vargas, Uirá is liberated and rehabilitated with official pomp and circumstance. Peaceful interaction with Indigenous peoples is celebrated. Still the clash is unhealed. Uirá seeks final solace in the currents of the river.

The existential tragedy of the Indigenous peoples is the fundamental background. Gustavo Dahl does not craft a work of grandiose abstract messages but keeps everything on a human level, avoiding melodramatic excess. 

Uirá only speaks Tupi, and the Brazilian administration only Portuguese. The worldview and the cosmology of the two is unreconciled. The meeting of the peoples founders instantly on the matter of dress. The Urubu-Kaapor family lives without hardly any dress, and nudity is intolerable for the Portuguese-Brazilians.

There is also a humoristic side to the cultural encounter – the first encounters with a brass band, a phonograph record and radio soap opera.

The restoration from 16 mm origins has resulted in a DCP with a vibrant and appealing colour world. It does justice to the fabulous Indigenous attires and the splendour of the Amazonia forest.