THE REVERSE OF HEAVEN

The Reverse of the Sky


Entirely filmed in the Javarí Reserve, in the extreme west of Amazonia, on the triple border of Brazil, Peru and Colombia, the work has as its theme the reversal of individual faith in religion, documenting the conversion currently practiced in an abusive way by the neo-Pentecostal churches even with the last non-contacted indigenous people present in this region and its severe consequences for the environment.

The process is ancient and has been repeated for centuries. Religious missions arrive, already financed by extractivism, succeeding each other in cycles... of rubber, gold, minerals, noble wood from the forest, wild fishing and hunting. Always going up, against the flow of the river, and thus entering the Amazon, destabilizing the natural balance of the region and reducing or sometimes even exterminating the modus vivendi and culture of the indigenous people, the first inhabitants of these lands.

Faith is a power of each individual to relate to their existence, but religion emerges as a colonizing element of this faith, manifesting itself as a new territory and a new collective identity. The cataclysm that we see with the arrival of the missionaries is just the beginning of the loss of identity and the transformation of the indigenous culture into a new Christian context, unhealthy and miserable, which in fact borders madness.

  • Mauricio & Walter Dias & Riedweg
    Director
  • Mauricio & Walter Dias & Riedweg
    Writer
  • Mauricio & Walter Dias & Riedweg
    Producer
    Pro Helvetia // Foundation Art and Initiatives
  • Project Title (Original Language):
    O AVESSO DO CÉU
  • Project Type:
    Documentary, Experimental, Short, Web / New Media
  • Runtime:
    40 minutes
  • Completion Date:
    March 1, 2023
  • Production Budget:
    40,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    Brazil
  • Country of Filming:
    Brazil
  • Language:
    Portuguese
  • Shooting Format:
    4k
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Mauricio & Walter Dias & Riedweg

Dias & Riedweg have worked together since 1993 to make collaborative and interdisciplinary public art projects, videos and performances. The duo consisting of Mauricio de Mello Dias (born in 1964, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) and Walter Stephan Riedweg (born in 1955, Luzern, Switzerland) both live and work in Rio de Janeiro.
In their work Dias & Riedweg explore issues of social politics and subjectivity using experimental practices that connect the centre with the margins of urban society. They have realised art projects and exhibitions worldwide and participated in several biennials, including: São Paulo (1998 and 2002), Istanbul (1998), Venice (1999), Havanna (2003), Gwangju (2006), as well as Documenta 12 in Kassel (2007). They had major solo exhibitions at MACBA - Museu d’art contemporani Barcelona, at Kiasma, Helsinki and Le Plateau, Paris. Recent projects include solo exhibitions at Kunsthal Nikolaj Copenhagen, at Americas Society, New York and a retrospective show at the Museum of Art Lucerne, in Switzerland. Their work is in important art collections such as the Museum of National Art Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the Museo National de Arte Contemporâneo Reina Sofia, Madrid and The Museums of Modern Art of Houston, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.

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Director Statement

THE REVERSE OF HEAVEN was conceived by Swiss-Brazilian artist duo Dias & Riedweg and later integrated by Brazilian photographer and indigenist Zaida Siqueira and Uruguayan, based-in-Zurich, multi-media artist Juan Ferrari.

Together, we collected and edited images and documents of diverse religious expressions and political speeches that, stimulated by capitalist exploitation, drastically change and reshape the Amazon territory in its last untouched parts. We focus on how personal belief and faith, if allied with comercial interests and precarious social reality, quickly leave the territory of perception and become insane territorial politics.

The “Word of God”, spread like a plague by neo-Pentecostals nowadays, not only “opens paths and moves mountains”, but also eradicates original forms of life and cultures of indigenous people who live in the Amazon. The groups in this region possibly represent the only alternative or the last cultures that live in a unique relationship of sustentability with nature.

The Javari Reserve, as big as Austria, is a triple-border region between Brazil, Peru and Colombia, in the extreme west of the Amazon. The advance of evangelization among the indigenous people of this region materializes, with perfidious clarity and contemporary nuances, some old matters of the territorialization of faith and the colonization of individuals through religious indoctrinations and specific commercial purposes.

The scheme is cartesian and old: Churches receive funds from various sectors whose private interests are predatory to launch evangelization missions among indigenous, recently contacted and even uncontacted, so that in this process they can intrinsically start the commercial exploitation of the territory, through illegal extraction of wood, minerals, fauna, fisheries and flora of the region officially demarcated as preserved indigenous reserve.

Faith is a power of each individual to relate to their existence, but religion emerges as a colonizing element of this faith, manifesting itself as a new territory and a new collective identity. The cataclysm that we see with the arrival of the missionaries is just the beginning of the loss of identity and the transformation of the indigenous culture into a new Christian context, unhealthy and miserable, which in fact borders madness.