Making "Uirapuru": a musical quest in the Brazilian Rain Forest

Abstract

Sixty years ago the author, an Israeli film student at the University of California, Los Angeles, set out to make a film based on a Brazilian Indian legend which had been set to music by Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959). Filming was carried out among Urubú-Ka'apor Indians in the state of Maranhão. In Belém, capital of Pará, he was joined by German anthropologist Peter Paul Hilbert (1914-1989) of the Goeldi Museum on an adventurous and creative expedition, culminating in a prize-winning art-documentary film and a life-long friendship between the two.