KAYAPO-FIRE OF THE JAGUAR

30 minutes Colour 1982 
Film maker: Peter Ramsden
Anthropologist: Terence Turner

This film tries to show how a complex and powerful set of ideas (really a whole philosophy of human nature and society) is communicated and brought to bear on everyday events within Kayapo society. The opening scene shows the telling of the myth of the jaguar and the fire by U-onhyn, the hunter who will kill a jaguar on the following day. Kayapo myths are normally told in such family settings, and are directed above all at children as bedtime stories. They are thus themselves potent instruments of the socialization process which they symbolically describe. The next scenes show the use of the cooking fire and various tools in everyday life. They try to get across how basic and intimately familiar a part of the lives of all Kayapo are the symbolic elements of the mythic and ritual dramas: the cooking fire, the bow and arrows, the spinning of cotton string as a characteristic women's activity, etc. Next U-onhyn is seen setting off on his hunt. He was going after deer: he only ran across the jaguar by accident because it was stalking the same deer as he was, as he recounts in his spirited retelling of the adventure.

A Jaguar ritual is shown in all its phases. First the men file into the plaza from the peripheral `dead' ground, in a solemn procession. Next, chief Ukakoro delivers the indispensible ben chant for the ceremonial dance to begin. When the dancing formation is complete, he takes the place of honour, together with U-onhyn, at the rear of the line. Once the hunter's dance is finished, the body of the jaguar is retrieved from the river (where it has been left to keep cool, but also to remain outside the village in the `dead' zone) and taken to the site of the boys' ritual feast. We see the preparation and eating of the jaguar's flesh by the boys, under the supervision of a couple of the initiated men who do the actual cooking. This is followed by the sharing out of the rest of the meat, cooked up with manioc dough and a bowl of rice, in the men's house.

The head and paws of the jaguar were cut off, not for ritual reasons, but to salvage the claws for a necklace and the skull for sale to the no-indigenous Brazilians. The film was made as part of the BBC series, Other People's Lives. A study guide for the series is available from the RAI, price £3,50. Catalogue number (16mm): 3RA118 £9.

[See The Kayapo-Out of the Forest for bibliography.]