Damiana Kryygi, winner of the 2015 Society for Visual Anthropology Film Festival in Denver, will be playing at the Normal Theater at 7 p.m. Wednesday, October 5.
This powerful documentary reconstructs the story of an Aché indigenous woman whose body became the object of scientific interest more than 100 years ago. Argentinian filmmaker Alejandro Fernández Mouján uncovers images of her as well as her physical remains in anthropology museums in Argentina and Germany. He documents the process of returning them to her family. In the process, he tells the story of contemporary Aché people and how they remember Damiana Kryygi.
The film will be screened as one of the many community events celebrating Latino/a heritage month and is part of the free Ethnographic Film Series organized by Anthropology Professor Liv Stone every fall.
“This is a beautiful and powerful film,” Stone said, “and we are honored to bring it to such a wonderful venue as the Normal Theater.”
After the screening, Archaeology Professor Logan Miller will comment on the issues surrounding the repatriation of indigenous remains that anthropologists find and work with in museums here in the Midwest.
The screening is free and open to the public. It was made possible with the support of the Cinema Arts Project of Beyond Normal Films, Latin American and Latino/a Studies, the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, and the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at Illinois State University.
