Olho por Olho [in English: Eye for an Eye] is essentially a film about a man’s memory. The documentary tells the history of a small town photojournalist and his relationship with his precious archive. In parallel, the movie offers a panorama of the cultural heritage of the Brazilian countryside.
This visual essay narrates the journey of a photographer who is losing his memories due to Alzheimer’s disease, as well as witnessing the deterioration of his physical archive. To represent all these intersections embodied in his history, the movie relies on experimental techniques, in which Higa’s photos are filmed in detail using different sources of light. On one hand, the aesthetics facilitates rebuilding the chronology of his body of work, while on the other hand, it offers a singular perspective of the substance of the images.
By presenting the battle of a man to outweigh the losses of his entire life’s work, the documentary poetically depicts aspects of the recent development of the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, a territory in the West of Brazil which was concurred after the War of the Triple Alliance. The state was officially created in 1977, during the military dictatorship and its social-political scenario was documented through Higa’s lenses since the early ’70s.
The project is developed in partnership with the photographer Conrado Roel. Since the beginning in 2012, we both have been involved in all the roles in the movie’s development, as writing scripts, researching, production, filming, and editing.
In 2018, Olho for Olho was one of those selected for the final phase of the 9th Pitching Doc Futura. By that time, also the director Joel Pizzini started to contribute with the project.