A documentary screening honouring Tatá, the last great spiritual elder of the Yawanawá people, presented as a fundraiser for the Yawanawá community.
The Spirit of Tatá screens at AFS Cinema on Tuesday, October 6, a fundraiser for the Yawanawá community brought to Austin by The SOFIE Foundation. It's a documentary about Tatá, the last great spiritual elder of the Yawanawá people of the Brazilian Amazon.
To get the full picture, you have to know who Tatá was. He lived to be 103, and for most of those years he was the one holding the tribe's spiritual legacy together through decades of colonization and the interference of rubber tappers and missionaries. When the Yawanawá began to reclaim their culture in the 1980s, he was the one guiding that revival—passing on the ceremonies, the songs, the healing practices, the knowledge of sacred plants, and the ancestral stories that might have otherwise been lost.
The film focuses on his final days, and it's a quiet, focused look at a man who spent his last day teaching from his deathbed, devoted to handing those teachings to the next generation. It's less of a sweeping historical epic and more of an intimate portrait of a life spent as a bridge between the old world and the new.
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Because this is a fundraiser, the money goes directly to the Yawanawá community. Doors open at 6:30 PM, and tickets are $30, with a pay-what-you-can option available if that's a better fit for you.
