10th Parallel

Silvio Da-Rin's film documents a perilous journey along the Envira River to the 10th Parallel south latitude on Brazil's border with Peru—an area of rainforest inhabited by the world's largest population of indigenous tribes who are still isolated from the larger society. But it's also an intensely emotional quest for José Carlos Meirelles, an aging sertanista (wilderness explorer) employed by FUNAI, the National Indian Foundation of Brazil. Accompanied by anthropologist Txai Terri de Aquino and a tiny crew, Meirelles pilots a small boat to FUNAI outposts and coastal communities that have established tenuous relations with the outside world. Along the way, Meirelles talks about his lifetime of work in the region, explaining how FUNAI's original policy of assimilation was abandoned after 1987, when it became clear that the approach had resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of tribal members, and the virtual enslavement of many others, especially in the interests of the rubber industry. Now FUNAI simply attempts to protect isolated peoples from encroachment. The expedition encounters some dangerous moments, but what gives this film special impact is Meirelles' resignation concerning the prospect of keeping still-uncontacted groups safe from the forces of modernity, and his recollections of earlier experiences, including once being wounded with an arrow and on another occasion being forced to kill an attacker in self-defense, a memory that still haunts him. 10th Parallel offers no easy answers to the issues it raises, but it does successfully outline the problem of balancing reverence for the past with the drive for progress. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (F. Swietek)