DÁ FALA

This film, shot in 2008, explores how memory of slavery intersects with life experience, black affirmation and urban reconversions in contemporary Rio de Janeiro. Despite the central place that Rio de Janeiro played in the Atlantic slave trade until the end of the 19th century, traces of this past have for long looked hidden in the urban landscape. This forgetting is not simply a random phenomenon, it also relates to the myth of racial democracy as an ideal that has actively tried to downplay racial inequalities in Brazil in the name of national mixture. Albeit little visible, the memories of a slave past are not deleted completely. They emerge ambiguously, but also powerfully, in the daily life of Tia Lúcia and Alder, the main characters of this film.