MÃO DO POVO 1

Translated transcrition o of the Lygia Pape movie available here.

[TIME]: TEXT

[00:06]: CULTURE AND EDUCATION MINISTRY

CULTURAL SUBJECTS DEPARTMENT

CULTURAL ACTION PROGRAM

PRESENT

[00:17]: THE HAND OF THE PEOPLE

[00:27]: a movie by Lygia Pape

[00:40]: The man from countryside is the creator of a popular art, already codified by an ancient cultural
tradition.

[00:47]: “I started to make it from an idea. For the hammock I go to the bog, understand? I cut out the
straw, dry it in the sunlight and put it out. Afterwards, I pick it up. Then I braid it. Tie them to these sticks
and weave the hammock.

[01:10]: Imbê vine. Some call it imbé vine, others, imbê vine, but its name is really imbê vine, you know?
It’s very strong. It gives 1000, 1500 vines. Some also give 10, 12 vines… Even 3000 vines. The mother-vine
grows on the top of the trees, understand? It generates up there, from nature. Then the vines grow until
they reach the ground, into the ground. And then more vines grow from there. They grow and dry out,
grow and dry out. We let them be. If one leaves some green vines, they keep growing. But if we take
everything, it dies. The mother stays up there, in the tree. Understand? When you find a mother-vine that
gave vines and you take them all, like that one on the top, it usually dies, you understand? If one leaves
some vines, 4 or 5 vines still attached to the mother, it keeps growing, it remains green. So, in 15 or 20
years, maybe it’ll give some vines.

[02:28]: Everyday necessities produce objects with great creative power. From Jequitinhonha Valley
comes a ceramic that reminds one of Picasso.

[03:54]: Mathematical thought appears in the quilt patterns.

[04:31]: When the rural man comes to the city he abandons his daily use objects and keeps only the
continuation of a decorative craftwork, which he sells in the margins of the street markets.

[05:09]: “I’m José Evangelista Gonzaga, came here from Rio Grande do Norte. Making ends meet, right?
As God allows me to. As long as it works, I’ll be around.”
[05:33]: “Blue ones, red ones, white ones, black ones. All colors. Golden, aluminum, silver-colored. I paint
them all colors. For them to please the people. Sometimes one doesn’t like one color, think it’s ugly,
someone else thinks it’s pretty. So I have to mixed them all, and each one will chose the prettier one.”

[06:15]: The trees made of industrial junk remind one of Mexican trees of life, as if it were the permanence
of a Latin collective unconscious. The structure of the trees is geometrical: the can cylinder is opened in
two and shredded in branches that are symmetrically twisted.

[07:02]: The abandonment of the self-fabricated objects alienates the man from his psychological and
cultural roots. He loses his identity. This eats away at him in the most profound way: in his authentic
creativity.

[07:54]: One of the most touching of the highly creative and natural exercises, transformed in cultural act
by the need for shelter, is that what imposed itself to the favela man. Bringing from the countryside his
experience with his surroundings, and from nothing but some junk material, he builds his shelter in a hill
slope and integrate it to the topology as if it were a living being. And fulfills the most advanced
requirements of engineering.

[09:04]: The former creator doesn’t realize consciously the cultural uprooting which will turn him into a
consumer of the lowest kitsch. The plastic flower, the blender plastic cover, the fridge penguin. From a
natural existence, he will now exist in a half-culture. Through kitsch, he thinks he’s ascended to the status
of city dweller, and that’s gratifying for him.