The College of Social Sciences and Public Policy Student Leadership Council will be hosting the North American premiere of “Stepping Softly on the Earth,” an award-winning documentary by Visiting Assistant Professor of Public Health Marcos Colón, Ph.D.
The event will be held at FSU’s Student Life Cinema on February 27, 2023, in partnership with the Askew Student Life Center and The Brazilian Student Association at FSU.
The film follows three Indigenous leaders from the Amazon – Kátia, chief of the Akrãtikatêjê people; Manoel, chief of the Munduruku people; and José Manuyama, a teacher of Kukama origin–as they resist the threats to their homes by large-scale capitalist enterprises, including mining, oil extraction, logging, and construction of hydroelectric plants and railroads.
All of these stories are brought together by the narration of Ailton Krenak. An Indigenous leader, philosopher, writer, and environmentalist, Krenak is considered one of the best writers in Brazil, and his writing served as inspiration for the documentary, even providing the phrase that would become the film’s title, “Pisar Suavemente na Terra,” which translates to “Stepping Softly on the Earth.”
The film asks the audience to consider the consequences of the capitalistic invasion that is plaguing the Indigenous people of the Amazon and provides an answer for the future of humanity based on the ancestral lives and practices of these people, preventing the planet’s destruction.
Dr. Colón originally premiered his award-winning film at the Sao Paulo International Film Festival on October 29, 2022. The documentary has already gained widespread praise, including winning the award for Best Photography at the Filmambiente festival on November 5, 2022, in Rio de Janeiro. Dr. Colón dedicated the award to late FSU student Brett Creel, who passed away on October 23 of this year. Brett Creel was one of Dr. Colón’s students and was very interested in Amazonian and environmental research. The film was also selected to play at the Spring 2023 New Jersey Film Festival.
One review by the Latin American Bureau in the UK states, “Pisar Suavemente na Terra is above all a philosophical film, a dive into perceptions of how the celebrated myth of progress and development on the Brazilian and Peruvian Amazon operate in practice. Interconnected by the voice and ancestral understanding of Ailton Krenak, these reports of resistance present other ways of existing and walking through the world.”
Watch the trailer in English, Portuguese, or Spanish.