Igor Furtado experiences a Catholic procession in Belem

In 2017 I was able to direct my first short film in Círio de Nazaré that is a Catholic procession that happens every October in Belem, which is the capital of Para. It’s a procession that gathers around, like, three million participants. It’s the largest religious event in Latin America. The event attracts a lot of attention due to the extreme manifestations of faith of the pilgrims that are coming from all over Brazil. Sometimes they walk on their knees for miles and fulfill oaths in many other painful and emotional ways. But since starting in the 18th century, until today, it had always happened with some sort of conflict. And Festa da Chiquita, it’s one example of those tensions. This party happens the night before Círio and is held by the LGBTQ community. So while lots of pilgrims are arriving in the city center to wait for the image of Our Lady of Nazareth to come so they can worship this image, there are also a lot of other people gathering to celebrate other forms of life, and love, and faith. And in the 80s, when it all started, they used to carry this golden deer in a truck around the city. They would play with this idea of procession and also with the idea of devotion, like, what devotion can mean. I think what really stuck to me with this experience is that I think both events symbolize perfectly the contrast of sacred and profane. And in this year, I didn’t sleep. I went for both the party, Chiquita party and the Círio. So, it was an incredible experience. I could live by both extremes of sacred and profane. And I really couldn’t choose one. I think like both experiences are super incredible really, both changed my life in many different ways, to see how there’s a level of humanity that transcends all of those things and speaks a lot as well about love, for me, which is what the film that I went there to do spoke about as well. So it was an incredible experience.