We quilombola women: a documentary about COVID-19 vaccination among quilombolas as an anti-racist device

Abstract

We quilombola women, a documentary that considers the quilombola identity and the right to COVID-19 vaccination, evokes notions of priority, rights, privileges and identity during the process of matching the number of vaccine doses available to citizens’ arms. Omission by a Brazilian federal government grounded in necro-politics and denial, plus a lack of information, led quilombo communities to take it on themselves to draw up lists of those eligible for vaccination. The production team’s aim was to use images as political language in the health field, so as to document and give visibility to these issues as one illustration of combating social and health inequalities and inequities rooted in structural racism. By combining science and art and interlacing references from the sociology of images, visual anthropology, plus the work and aesthetic devices of Eduardo Coutinho, the audiovisual production method brought out three key categories: I, We, and They, quilombola women. This article explores these categories underpinning construction of the documentary narrative, which drew on the potential of images, which in turn served as anti-racist, political and educational devices, both in the course of the production process and during the public screenings.