https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/07/lost-holy-grail-film-of-life-in-brazil-amazon-100-years-ago-resurfaces [p] Skip to main contentSkip to navigationSkip to navigation Print subscriptions Sign in Search jobs Search US edition[ ] * US edition * UK edition * Australia edition * International edition * Europe edition The Guardian - Back to homeThe Guardian [ ] * News * Opinion * Sport * Culture * Lifestyle ShowMoreShow More * [ ]News + View all News + US news + World news + Environment + US politics + Soccer + Business + Tech + Science + Newsletters + Fight for democracy * [ ]Opinion + View all Opinion + The Guardian view + Columnists + Letters + Opinion videos + Cartoons * [ ]Sport + View all Sport + Soccer + NFL + Tennis + MLB + MLS + NBA + NHL + F1 + Golf * [ ]Culture + View all Culture + Film + Books + Music + Art & design + TV & radio + Stage + Classical + Games * [ ]Lifestyle + View all Lifestyle + Fashion + Food + Recipes + Love & sex + Home & garden + Health & fitness + Family + Travel + Money * Search input [ ] google-search Search + Support us + Print subscriptions * [ ]US edition + UK edition + Australia edition + International edition + Europe edition * + Search jobs + Digital Archive + Guardian Puzzles app + Guardian Licensing + The Guardian app + Video + Podcasts + Pictures + Inside the Guardian + Guardian Weekly + Crosswords + Wordiply + Corrections * + Facebook + Twitter * + Search jobs + Digital Archive + Guardian Puzzles app + Guardian Licensing * World * Europe * US * Americas * Asia * Australia * Middle East * Africa * Inequality * Global development A still from Amazonas, Maior Rio do Mundo (Amazon: Longest River in the World) by the director Silvino Santos. [ ] A still from Amazonas, Maior Rio do Mundo (Amazon: Longest River in the World) by the director Silvino Santos. Photograph: Narodni filmovy archiv, Prague A still from Amazonas, Maior Rio do Mundo (Amazon: Longest River in the World) by the director Silvino Santos. Photograph: Narodni filmovy archiv, Prague The ObserverBrazil Lost 'holy grail' film of life in Brazil's Amazon 100 years ago resurfaces Documentary from 1918 that has been hailed as a classic emerges from depths of Czech archive Constance Malleret in Rio de Janeiro Sat 7 Oct 2023 13.00 EDTLast modified on Sat 7 Oct 2023 15.02 EDT * * * A long-lost Amazon documentary described as "the holy grail of Brazilian silent cinema" has been rediscovered nearly a century after it went missing. Amazonas, Maior Rio do Mundo (Amazon: Longest River in the World)was stolen from the original director, Silvino Santos, shortly after it was made in 1918. Just over a decade later, it had completely disappeared. The film resurfaced earlier this year in a Czech archive and was identified by specialists in Italy and Brazil. "It's basically a miracle," said Savio Stoco, the Brazilian expert on Santos who confirmed the discovery. "We didn't have the slightest hope that this work would one day be found." A Portuguese-born cinematographer who spent most of his life in the Amazon, Santos was one of the main non-fiction film-makers of early 20th century Brazilian cinema. He is best remembered for his 1922 documentary No Paiz das Amazonas (In the Country of the Amazons), which experts read as an attempted remake of his lost production. The 1918 film is considered a rare gem of Brazilian cinematography for its length, subject matter, and quality of composition. Featuring fascinating footage of the Amazon forest's diverse landscapes and inhabitants - including some of the earliest known moving images of the Indigenous Witoto people - the feature-length film "mixes different dimensions of the documentary genre into a very enjoyable narrative for the viewer", explains Stoco, a professor of visual arts at the federal university of Para in Belem. A still from Amazonas, Maior Rio do Mundo (Amazon: Longest River in the World) by the director Silvino Santos. The 1918 film is considered a gem of Brazilian cinematography for its length, subject matter, and quality of composition. Photograph: Narodni filmovy archiv, Prague Santos takes his audience on a remarkably detailed journey through the Amazon, alternating close-up shots of caimans, jaguars and tropical flora with footage of Indigenous rituals and longer sequences showcasing the region's extractive industries: rubber, the Brazil nut, timber, fishing, even the egret feathers that were a staple of women's fashion at the time. The lost documentary gained mythical status in Brazil with the story of its disappearance, which was recorded by Santos in an unpublished memoir written shortly before his death in 1969. Shot over three years in the Peruvian and Brazilian Amazon, the film vanished before it could be screened in Brazil and bankrupted its Manaus-based production company. The negative was stolen by an associate of Santos, Propercio de Mello Saraiva, who was negotiating the documentary's international sale. Instead Saraiva pocketed the print, claimed he was the director, and fraudulently signed a deal with Gaumont to distribute the film in England, where it was retitled Wonders of the Amazon. The documentary circulated to great acclaim in Europe for a few years, but by 1931 all traces of it had vanished. "It is still in the orbit of the planets," Santos wrote in his memoir. However, a negative copy of an older, now disintegrated nitrate print of the film survived at the Narodni filmovy archiv, in Prague, where it had been miscatalogued as a US production from around 1925. Doubting its labelling, a curator sent a copy earlier this year to Jay Weissberg, a specialist in silent cinema. Brazil's first-ever minister for Indigenous peoples: 'It is time for the world to look at our way of life' Read more "Within seconds, I knew it was not 1925, it was much earlier, and it certainly had nothing to do with anything anyone in the US might have made," says Weissberg, who is director of Italy's Pordenone silent film festival where the documentary will be screened this week. Stoco then confirmed Weissberg's hunch that the Amazon footage was "the holy grail of Brazilian [silent] documentaries". Further showings are planned later this year in the Czech Republic and Brazil, although screening the documentary today raises questions about Santos's colonialist gaze. "It is of course a film marked by the perspective of the time and by its financiers, who were members of Manaus's commercial elite," says Stoco. As well as its unabashed focus on publicising the forest's economic potential, the film exoticises Indigenous peoples without acknowledging the horrors they faced . The early 20th century rubber boom enslaved and exterminated Indigenous communities, including the Witoto who were forced out of isolation in their native Colombia, with some communities fleeing to Peru and Brazil. Early in his career, Santos was funded by a notorious Peruvian rubber baron. "[He] couldn't talk about the atrocities that were taking place," Stoco says, arguing that the film remains important precisely for its perspective of the Amazon as "a region to be exploited" - a view that continues to drive the devastation of the rainforest and its native populations today. 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