What does the disappearance of the Amazon have to do with the disappearance of Venice?

, by  Ana Maria Machado

While the city sinks, Yanomami filmmaker Morzaniel Ɨramari presents his work at one of the world’s leading film festivals and reflects on the ’revenge of the earth’ when he realizes that the place could succumb to the effects of climate change

It’s the end of the hottest summer in the northern hemisphere, possibly in the last 120,000 years, when Yanomami cinema reaches Venice. I, who follow the filmmaker Morzaniel Ɨramari, am a translator of languages and sometimes of worlds. Venice, the famous Italian water city that has existed for sixteen centuries, is now more than ever threatened by this enemy that we non-indigenous people have created: climate change. When I explained to leader and shaman Davi Kopenawa about our trip to Venice and the risk of this city disappearing, submerged by rising sea levels, he asked me to pass on a message that he hopes will be taken seriously: "What you call climate change is Urihi a në yuo: it’s climate revenge, it’s the revenge of the Earth." In Kopenawa’s words, with the destruction of the forest and the death of the elder shamans, the xapiri (auxiliary spirits of the shamans), disgusted by the destruction of the planet, are taking revenge on those who destroy it. Kopenawa says that in the future we will all be burned to death or drowned.

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View online : O que o desaparecimento da Amazônia tem a ver com o desaparecimento de Veneza?

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