| Pierre Fatumbi Verger: Messenger between Two Worlds Photographer, ethnographer, author, world traveler, Parisian playboy, friend to kings, initiate of secret religious societies, Pierre Verger was a Frenchman driven by his own personal demons and the power of the African deities to devote his life to the study of the reciprocal cultural influences between Brazil and the Yoruba and Fon regions of West Africa. But the story is not just Verger’s. His life is used as an entryway into an exploration of the complex religious traditions that were brought from Africa to Brazil with slavery and live on in the cultural resilience and deep spirituality of the African and Afrobrazilian people. Verger, in his trips back and forth across the Atlantic, served more than once as a messenger bringing gifts and information for religious leaders in Brazil and West Africa, ultimately discovering that the trauma of Africans’ forced migration to the New World had not sundered them from the African roots they continue to revere. This sumptuously filmed documentary is narrated by renowned Brazilian musician Gilberto Gil, who takes us from Brazil to France, Benin, and Nigeria, where priests and kings, friends and colleagues, comment on the significance of Verger’s life and the cultures in which he immersed himself. The documentary shows us not only the dances and divination ceremonies of Africa and Brazil, but also demonstrates the deep and pervasive ties of faith and family that exist between a people that even an ocean and the rupture of slavery cannot divide. Pierre Fatumbi Verger: Messenger Between Two Worlds dir. Luiz Buarque de Hollanda Brazil, 1998, 90 minutes Portuguese with English subtitles Bibliography Thompson, Robert Farris and Phyllis Galembo. Divine Inspiration: From Benin to Bahía. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico, 1993. Johnson, Paul C. Secrets, Gossip, and Gods: The Transformation of Brazilian Candomblé. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Pivin, Jean Loup and Pascal Martin Saint Leon, eds. Pierre Verger: Le Messager/The Go-Between. Photographies 1932-1962. Paris: Editions Revue Noire, 1993.
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