Educational Media Reviews Online

This work is both fascinating and difficult to review and characterize. At first glance, this film appears to be quite specific, focusing as it does on the life of a single eccentric French photographer, Pierre Verger, also known as Fatumbi, who, through a combination of chance and choice came to live much of his life in Bahia, on the Atlantic coast of eastern Brazil and in the Republic of Benin, in western Africa. But all is not as it seems—the true scope of the work reveals itself slowly as the story of Verger’s life unfolds. We come to find that the scope of this film is enormous, moving from France in the 1920s to Brazil and Benin in the 1990s. In the process it explores the Brazilian religion of Candomblé and the cross-Atlantic connections between Latin America and Africa, which are deep and robust.

Verger was born in Paris in 1902, to a middle class family. He lived a more or less conventional, if somewhat unsettled, life in Paris, though he clearly had a taste for adventure and other cultures, and a critique of the bourgeoisie from early on. In the 1930s, after the death of his mother, he decided to take his camera and travel the world. From Paris he went to Tahiti, the United States, Japan, China, Italy and Spain and then onto several countries in Africa and South America. In 1946, traveling on an old, slow ship embarked on its last voyage, he landed in Bahia and “became seduced by the presence of so many of African descent and their influence on local lifestyles.” According to the film, Candomblé was an integral part of the Bohemian atmosphere of the town of Salvador, Bahia, at the time. Verger became close friends with Mae Senhora, a long-time, well respected local leader in this African-derived religion. Eventually he traveled to Benin, to find the roots of the tradition, and helped to establish personal contacts between the Brazilians and their counterparts in Benin. In Benin, Verger was “reborn” as Fatumbi, undergoing a long, formal initiation into secrets and rituals of the tradition. Over time, Verger spent 17 or 18 in Benin, mostly a year at a time. In addition to his lush, beautiful photos of Brazil and Benin, he also documented his experiences and the cultures he explored through writing or collaborating on several books and essays on the African connections to Latin America. He loved both coasts of the Atlantic, he says in the film, but he loved Bahia just a little more. Verger died in 1996, the day after one of the interviews featured in the documentary.

This work will appeal to anyone interested in the ethnographic process as he discusses how he set about exploring the local culture in new places. It would be well-chosen as part of any collection on Brazil, on Benin, on African religions and dance both in their Old World and their New World manifestations, and on the history of the slave trade between Brazil and Benin. It would also be appropriate to collections on photography and photographers of the twentieth-century. This film covers a broad sweep of history and culture with many side stories that speak to the complexity of tradition, change, and ethnic identity—as with a segment on a community in Benin descended from one of the great illegal slave traders from 19th century Brazil who still maintain their identities as Brazilians.

At the same time, this would be challenging to use in a classroom and would work best with prior study and contextualization by the instructor. It is long. It includes dance performances, rituals, and the filmmaker’s progress as he seeks to retrace Verger’s steps. The story also unfolds through interviews with Verger, and with his friends in France, Brazil, and Benin, including kings representing ancient African dynasties and contemporary anthropologists. An off-screen narrator sometimes reads from Verger’s writing, but there is no overarching narrative to tie all of these elements together. While the story is clear enough, it requires some patience. Still, patience will be rewarded as this is a rich and fascinating ethnographic and historical document.

The audio and video are acceptably clear and some of the imagery is quite beautiful. The dialogue is in Portuguese and French with English subtitles.