Shot in Bahia, Brazil, The Possibility of Spirits is an essay film on the mystery of spirit-possession. Images of possession ceremonies first and foremost reveal that we don’t know what it is that we are looking at. Words are allowed to drift out of meaning. Trying to grasp the phenomenon, they become silence, or laughter, or screaming. Paying tribute to the extra-ordinariness of its subject matter, this film invites viewers to allow themselves to be confused and -in that confusion- consider the possibility of spirits.
Mattijs van de Port
Mattijs van de Port is a visual anthropologist at the University of Amsterdam. In his films, all of them shot in Brazil, he keeps returning to realms of transgression – ecstatic religion, violence, eroticism and aesthetics – where humans face the fact that the world does not necessarily comply with their narrations of it. His filmwork includes Saborear Frutas Brasileiras (2013), about the joy of eating fruits and the essay films The Possibility of Spirits (2016); Knots and Holes (2018); The Body Won’t Close (2021). Where Can I Get Lost? will have its European premiere in the 2024 Ethnofest. Van de Port’s films won several awards and prizes, including the prestigious Basil Wright Film Prize in 2021 and the Excellence in Visual Anthropology Award in that same year.