Gender, Sexuality & Identity Collaborative Project to Host Event: “Visual Anthropology Between Brazil and the Ryukyus” (11/6)

On Thursday, November 6th, 2025 15:00-16:30, Tokyo College’s “Gender, Sexuality & Identity” collaborative project will host a film screening event titled “Visual Anthropology Between Brazil and the Ryukyus (Okinawa).”
Three short films will be screened, followed by a Q&A and discussion with the film directors, Lucia Kakazu and Thaís Omine. The event will be conducted in English, although the films will be shown in Portuguese with English and Japanese subtitles.
You can register for the event here: Registration Form. Attendance will be first come, first serve.

Date & Time : Thursday, November 6th, 2025 15:00-16:30
Venue: Location details will be shared after you register.
Language: English
Organizing Body: Gender, Sexuality & Identity Research Project, Tokyo College
Contact: shannon.welch@tc.u-tokyo.ac.jp

Agenda:
Film 1: “Mabui: Rivers that Spring from the Asphalt, Voices that Pulse from the Chest” (Documentary, 34 min e 17s, 2022)
Directed by: Lucia Kakazu (School of Communication and Arts Postgraduate program in drama, The University of São Paulo; Researcher Institute for Islands and Sustainability, The University of the Ryukyus)
Abstract: The documentary depicts the research and creative process behind the performance “Mabui” by dancer Lúcia Kakazu. The work premiered in 2022 and was created based on interviews with Kamintyus and Yutás, women who practice Okinawan spirituality in the city of São Paulo (BR).

Film 2: O Silêncio É Muito Eloquente (Silence is very eloquent) - (Experimental, 7 min, 2025)
Directed by: Thaís Omine (Master's in Visual and Media Anthropology, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany)
Abstract: The experimental film O Silêncio É Muito Eloquente emerges from Thaís’ personal archive of counter-narratives within the Okinawan diaspora in Brazil. Developed over the past seven years, her anthropological research, O Meu Gene Não é Solúvel, examines the sociopolitical context of Japanese and Okinawan immigration to Latin America in the 20th century. Over time, this research has taken on different forms, unfolding through both textual and audiovisual explorations. Grounded in decolonial praxis, Thaís interrogates the methodological challenges of researching stories where silence – rooted in trauma, humiliation, and violence – becomes an imposed norm. She further reflects on how spaces of exclusion remain peripheral within the social sciences, which, as Grace Cho suggests, have a tendency to produce “ghosts.”

Film 3: Maré (Tide) - (Documentary, 37 minutes, 2022)
Directed by: Thaís Omine
Abstract: "Maré", tide in Portuguese, is a documentary about three young Brazilian Uchinaanchu women – Naomi Asato, Lúcia Kakazu, and Miwa Higa – daughters of the Okinawan diaspora in São Paulo, Brazil. The film is a result of encounters and conversations shared with them in 2022, in which they talk about their own research and artistic practices, acting as "native anthropologists" to take ownership over the colonized histories and narratives about Okinawa and the diaspora. They tell us the herstories of Utiná from the land that we now call Brazil, challenging who tells and how the stories of the diaspora are told.
The film is a complement to wider anthropological research about the Okinawan diaspora in contemporary Brazil.