The kite runners of Itapuã
Among the white Abaeté dunes of Itapuã, an old fishing village in Salvador, Brazil, against a cool tropical sunset, a flurry of colourful kites can be seen dancing in the prevailing winds.
This tender ritual is that of the local Afro-Indigenous kite runners who each week skilfully fly their kites as a symbol of their ancestral territory.
Throughout August, a stirring and elegant short film by Brazilian-Irish artist and researcher, Thaís Muniz, will be screened at Triskel Arts Centre, offering a rare glimpse of this centuries old community and their spiritual practices.
Titled, ‘The Kite Ballet’, the film will be shown as part of Artist Film International 2026 (AFI’26) in collaboration with Crawford Art Gallery who have invited Muniz to Leeside to present the film.
This is Crawford Art Gallery’s seventh collaboration with AFI and the first time the global touring film programme will be shown in Triskel Arts Centre throughout the month of August. Muniz’ film will also be shown in participating countries across Europe, Asia, and the USA.
Highlighting the threat of development to Afro-Indigenous territory in Brazil, Muniz’s film advocates for play in adulthood and negotiations with nature as essential, revolutionary acts of resistance. Through the film, she seeks to emphasise the community’s activation of the territory while amplifying the voices of local activists.
Dawn Williams, curator at Crawford Art Gallery said described Muniz's ‘The Kite Ballet’ as an eloquent, beguiling meditation on the power and necessary persistence of playful ritual and resistance.
She said: “The film gently probes the general loss of play in adulthood yet the balletic movements of the kite flyers and the joy of these community activists who gather weekly, show an alternative way of resisting capitalism’s unsustainable and indeterminate growth into natural habitats of indigenous people’s lands, which continues to threaten to displace and erode traditional communities in Salvador, Brazil. In its focus on the specific and local, the film speaks to wider geopolitical concerns and the need for deeper care within our communities and a much-needed move towards degrowth.”
Founded in 2008 by the Whitechapel Gallery in London, AFI is a global collaborative project featuring film, video, and animation. Each year, AFI collectively curates and presents twelve films chosen by international arts organisations across the world. Responding to this year’s theme, ‘A Kind of Power’, AFI partners have commissioned or selected international artists whose short films renegotiate the fraught legacies of representation and respond to the conditions under which people, histories, and territories are made visible.
A public talk with artist Thaís Muniz and Dr Eve Olney with Dawn Williams, curator, Crawford Art Gallery will take place on 27 August from 1-1.30pm at Triskel Arts Centre.
Screenings for AFI’26 will take place in Triskel Arts Centre from 10am-1.30pm each Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday throughout August. Screenings are free and no booking is required.