The short film Pattaki (2018), an offering to Iemanjá: africanness in diaspora

Abstract

This essay aims to describe and analyze the short film Pattaki (2018), by Black intellectual and director Everlane Moraes, while interrogating and challenging notions of Africanness in diaspora. The film was made between 2015 and 2018, during the period when Everlane studied Documentary Directing at the Escuela Internacional de Cine y TV (EICTV) in San Antonio de Los Baños, Cuba. This paper discusses the director’s trajectory in the audiovisual production in the state of Sergipe, Brazil, while also reflecting on aspects of her time at EICTV. The description and analysis of the film highlight the diasporic encounter—between Afro-Brazilian and Afro-Cuban cultures—in a work that positions itself as an offering to the Orixá Iemanjá. It concludes that, through the movement of the diaspora, emerge the encounters and disencounters that compose the heterogeneity present in a narrative that celebrates the protagonism of Black women. The film, which we regard as a point of arrival, also becomes a point of departure—an anchor that evokes a place of return, while simultaneously allowing for escape upon arrival. It conveys the in-between space of the diasporic movement, celebrating the struggle and resistance of Black people.

Key words: Black Cinema; African Diaspora; Latin American Cinema; Pattaki (2018); Everlane Moraes.