YNDIO DO BRASIL is Sylvio Back's eighth feature film. Like previous documentaries such as Revolução de 30 (The revolution of 1930), República Guarani (Die Republik der Guarani), Guerra do Brasil (Brazil's War) and Radio Auriverde this is a new and fascinating film which explores the history of this country, leaving out ideological subtexts.

Silvio Back comments: "Archive films give an image of a Brazil that never existed. In the meantime this image which was tied to a particular time has lost its original meaning. Our history needs thorough analysis so we can present it in Brazilian film without judgement or prejudice."

The idea came up in 1989/1990 during negotiations in the U.S. concerning the editing of Rádio Auriverde. In the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institute and the National Archive, Back found a wonderful and hitherto unknown treasure of Indian films presenting an informative account of tensions between the audiovisual register of white society and the physical and mythical universe of native communities.

For four years the director did research in public and private archives in Brazil and the U.S. He viewed 700 newsreels, documentaries and features. This was the basis of his synthesis of images illustrating the "transformation of our First into our Last." Besides the images discovered in foreign archives, most were found in the Brazilian cinemathèque in São Paulo, the cinemathèque in the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro, the Indio Museum and the National Archive.

YNDIO DO BRASIL is a film collage of nearly a hundred titles, containing an unexpected repertoire of serious and popular music by Brazilian composers, inspired by the Indio. In addition Sylvio Back wrote eight poems dealing with Indio issues, read by actor José Mayer. These work is a kind of motif throughout the film.

Thus the director creates an ambivalence which is supposed to introduce the audience to the ideas behind the film, "viewing an author's film which trusts the public to figure out the meaning of it all".

At the threshold of the 21st century, when the 'end of the Indio', his extinction is happening, YNDIO DO BRASIL is the chronicle of a genocide, a 'death in life', never ignored in film. Sylvio Back's documentary traces a not always hidden 'military spirit' from Rondon (Colonel Cândido Mariano da Silva Rondon, 'Father of the Indios', created the first protection service for the Indians in 1909) modern pedagogical approaches during first contacts and attempts at integration, on which the entire Brazilian Indio politics is based, as well as the religious one.

(Produktionsmitteilung)

Silvio Back was born in Blumenau/Brazil as the son of German-Hungarian immigrants. Back is self-taught and has made 34 films since 1962.

He published several volumes of poetry: 'O Caderno Erótico de Sylvio Back'(1986), 'Moedas de Luz' (1988), 'A Vinha do Desejo' (1994).

1968: Lance Maior. 1971: A Guerra dos Pelados. 1976: Aleluia Gretchen. 1980: Revolução de 30. 1982: República Guarani. 1987: Guerra do Brasil. 1991: Rádio Auriverde. 1996: Yndio Do Brasil; Stefan Zweig.