On February 18, 2022, the Brazil LAB hosted a screening of Brazilian filmmaker Rodrigo Sellos’ 2020 documentary Por onde anda Makunaima? (Searching for Makunaima), in collaboration with the graduate student-run Boquitas Pintadas film club.

The documentary explores the continued relevance of Makunaima — alternatively spelled Macunaíma or Makunaimã — a character perhaps best known for his appearance in Brazilian literature and film. One of the creation myths of the indigenous peoples living on the Amazonian border between Brazil, Venezuela, and Guyana, the legend of Makunaima was documented by the German anthropologist Koch-Grünberg in his 1916 ethnography Vom Roraima zum Orinoco (From Roraima to the Orinoco). History was made when this book fell into the hands of the modernist Mario de Andrade, who would go on to pen the landmark novel Macunaíma: O herói sem nenhum caráter (Macunaíma: The Hero With No Character), published in 1928. The novel would be adapted in 1969 by Joaquim Pedro de Andrade into the most censored film of the Cinema Novo movement, and in 1979, Antunes Filho would bring it to the stage. With interviews in Portuguese, German, Spanish, Macuxi, and Taurepang, Searching for Macunaima follows these twists, turns, and transformations, artistically interrogating the myth’s continued resurgence.

The event opened with initial remarks by the documentary’s director Rodrigo Sellos, as well as Spanish and Portuguese doctoral students Catarina Lins and Dylan Blau Edelstein. Following the screening, João Biehl mediated a discussion with Sellos, alongside Brazilian anthropologist Aparecida Vilaça and writer Katrina Dodson, whose translation of Mário de Andrade’s Macunaíma will be published by New Directions in 2023.

The conversation largely focused on the movement and endless adaptability of the myth. “There seems to be a Macunaíma for every generation,” Sellos remarked. While this might lead us to discussions of cultural appropriation, Vilaça pushed back against the notion that Mário de Andrade or any of these filmmakers had “robbed” the myth from the Pemon people. Citing Levi Strauss’s ideas on the ever-transforming nature of myths, Vilaça proposed we think of the novel and its remakes, including Sellos’ film, as part of the legend’s continued shapeshifting and renewal.

This led to speculation on Felipe Bragança’s upcoming remake of the novel and Cinema Novo film. Notably, this version, unlike the 1969 movie, will include the creative input of indigenous artists. The question was left open: as the myth continues to take on new forms, how will this next Makunaima respond to today’s world?