Curatorial
Interdisciplinary film programs
07 & 08 August 2026
OkiNoWar week: Echoes of the Diaspora
Curated by Thaís Omine
as part of Planetary Yui at Savvy Contemporary
As part of OkiNoWar series, in dialogue with “NUCHI-GAFŪ du SHIDI-GAFŪ: Okinawa, the Art of Non-violence” at HKW and “dont kill US twice” at SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA
The Okinawan diaspora in Brazil is not a single story but a field of tensions—between silence and speech, memory and erasure, assimilation and refusal. The works gathered here approach this terrain from different angles, yet each circles the same difficult question: what does it mean to inherit a history that was never fully told?
“HIA SÁ SÁ HAI YAH!” by legendary director Olga Futemma takes a more confrontational approach. Made in 1985, it examines the images the West has projected onto Okinawan subjects—submissive, hardworking, diligent, but also authoritarian, violent, arrogant—and contrasts them with a suppressed interiority: the territory of conflict and poetry that official narratives cannot contain. The film refuses the comfort of a unified identity, insisting instead on the fractures that define diasporic experience.
André Okuma’s “Moti” anchors itself in the intimate space of a family home on election day. An 84-year-old woman, Nami, begins to speak. As she recounts childhood traumas from 1940s Brazil, her grandson Jun is pulled toward a different kind of conflict, one shaped by the political polarizations of the present. The film holds these temporalities together without resolution, suggesting that the past does not pass but persists, often in forms we fail to recognize. The moti, a traditional Japanese sweet, becomes a quiet metaphor for how sweetness and bitterness coexist within a single inherited form.
Thaís Omine’s “O Silêncio É Muito Eloquente” approaches this history from the perspective of method. Drawing from nearly a decade of anthropological research, the film interrogates how social sciences have historically produced “ghosts”—subjects rendered invisible by the very frameworks meant to study them. If silence is not an absence but a language, the film asks, how do we mourn what we cannot remember? The work does not pretend to answer, but instead dwells in the difficulty of the question.
Taken together, these films form a conversation across time and medium. They resist the impulse to narrativize diaspora as a clean arc of migration, adaptation, and integration. Instead, they point to the unresolved, the unsaid, and the ongoing—echoes that confront oblivion and demand resistance.
31 July 2026
OkiNoWar week: don’t kill US twice: An Active Form of Memorialization
Curated by Thaís Omine & Riko Sugama
as part of Common Visions Berlin SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA
As part of OkiNoWar series, in dialogue with “NUCHI-GAFŪ du SHIDI-GAFŪ: Okinawa, the Art of Non-violence” at HKW and “Planetary Yui” at SAVVY Contemporary
The Ryukyus were not merely colonized. They were dismantled—systematically, ideologically, brutally. After Japan’s forcible annexation in 1879, the archipelago was subjected to decades of colonial assimilation. During the Battle of Okinawa in 1945, more than 120,000 Okinawans died. Today, over twenty percent of Okinawa remains occupied by U.S. military installations, while the remains of thousands killed during the war continue to shape struggles over land, memory, and militarization.
The Ryukyus were not merely colonized. They were dismantled—systematically, ideologically, brutally. After Japan’s forcible annexation in 1879, the archipelago was subjected to decades of colonial assimilation. In the 1945 Battle of Okinawa, that subjugation became a death sentence: over 120,000 Okinawans died as a human bulwark for Japan. That was the first killing. Today, over twenty percent of Okinawa remains occupied by U.S. military installations, while the remains of thousands killed during the war continue to shape struggles over land, memory, and militarization.
This event brings together film screenings, conversation, and performance to reflect on Okinawa’s ongoing experience of war and occupation, and on memorialization as an active political practice. This is an active form of memorialization: not mourning alone, but refusal.
FILM PROGRAM
ナナムイ (Nanamui Series)
Toyomitsu Higa, Japan, 1997–2001, 158 min. Miyako (Myākufutsu) with English subtitles
Nanamui (1997–2001) documents the sacred indigenous rituals of Miyako Island’s female priestesses, capturing spiritual songs and practices rarely shown to outsiders. Spiritual landscapes, indigenous memory, ritual spaces, and sacred relationships between people, land, and ancestors that create a dialogue between political resistance and spiritual continuity.
「しまくとぅばで語る戦世」(Voices of the War Era in Shimakutuba)
Toyomitsu Higa, Japan, 1997–2003, 65 min. Indigenous Ryukyuan Languages and Japanese with English subtitles
Toyomitsu Higa’s practice has traveled across the region: invited to the Gwangju Biennale (2014), he withdrew his work days after the opening to protest state censorship, in solidarity with a censored fellow artist. His work persistently articulates solidarity between Okinawa and Jeju Island—twin sites of civilian massacre and ongoing militarization. Higa also collaborated closely with bone-activist Takashi Gushiken, documenting his decades-long practice of returning war dead to families.
Close To The Bone
Katsuya Okuma, Japan, France, 2024, 115 min. Japanese with English subtitles
Katsuya Okuma’s Close to the Bone follows Takashi Gushiken, an activist who has spent more than four decades recovering the remains of those killed during the Battle of Okinawa. As human remains continue to be unearthed from sites now threatened by military construction, the film asks what it means to mourn, remember, and refuse erasure.
Toyomitsu Higa is one of the most influential photographers documenting Okinawan society and culture. Born in Yomitan, Okinawa in 1950, he has devoted his practice to recording Okinawa’s rituals, landscapes, and everyday life, revealing the cultural and spiritual layers embedded in local communities.
Riko Sugama is a Berlin-based Ryukyuan dancer, singer, and sanshin performer from Okinawa, Japan. Born into a traditional Ryukyuan dance dojo and trained from early childhood, she developed a practice grounded in inherited tradition while continually exploring new creative possibilities.
03. July 2026
Corpo-Abrigo (Body-Shelter)
As part of “Caring histories: Asian Caregivers in Berlin – Migration, Memory, and Social Change (1950–present)” at Mental Health Art Space Berlin
What happens when the world refuses to be a home? Where does the body go?
This program proposes audiovisual perspectives on the body as a shelter. Not as resignation, but as an act of profound care. In the aftermath of migration, in the long process of integration that demands forgetting, in the exhaustion of constant negotiation — where do we go when everywhere else is not safe? How do we build safety when none is given? How do we hold each other when the ground beneath us trembles?
Corpo-Abrigo brings together three short films from the land we now call Brazil that speak to this quiet, radical architecture of care. In Amarela, we follow Erika who finds herself in this invisible role of being an Asian Brazilian woman, trying to reclaim her space and break free from expectations—from her Japanese-Brazilian family, from the non-Asian Brazilian society. Sliding through the intimate space of a queer group of friends, Quebramar embraces our hearts with warmth and the possibility of being a refuge for those we not only love and care for, but resonate and understand. Mabui, by Lucia Kakazu, extends this architecture of care into the spiritual realm: the film documents the artist’s process in art and dance as a form of ancestral shelter, grounding itself in a deep connection with Ryukyuan spirituality and acknowledging the indigenous aspects of Okinawan ethnicity through the guidance of shamans—who, in this context, become caretakers not of bodies or social roles, but of souls and memory.
FILM PROGRAM
Mabui: Rivers that Spring from the Asphalt, Voices that Pulse from the Chest
by Lucia Kakazu | HD color | 35min | 2022 | Portuguese with English subtitles
The documentary depicts the research and creative process behind the performance “Mabui” by dancer Lúcia Kakazu. The work premiered in 2022 and was created based on interviews with Kamintyus and Yutás, women who practice Okinawan spirituality in the city of São Paulo (BR).
Amarela
by André Hayato Saito | HD color | 15min | 2024 | Portuguese with English subtitles
On the day of the 1998 World Cup final between Brazil and France, Erika Oguihara, a Japanese-Brazilian teenager who rejects her family traditions, experiences a violence that seems invisible and plunges into a painful sea of emotions.
Quebramar (Breakwater)
by Cris Lyra | HD color | 27min | 2019 | Portuguese with English subtitles
A group of young queer friends travels to a secluded beach in São Paulo to celebrate New Year’s Eve. There, away from the weight of daily prejudice, they build a refuge — physical and emotional — through friendship, music, and the simple act of existing together. They talk about their bodies, their hair, their fears, their desires. They laugh. They sing. They hold each other.
May 2024
NO TERRA NULLIUS: On Land and Territory »
Curated by Thaís Omine, Afsun Moshiry, Galo E. Rivera and Viviane Tabach
SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA, Berlin, Germany
The concept of territory extends beyond mere physical space, stretching to encompass material and immaterial networks of power, control and belonging. The geographical power configuration of “global north and south” that we today inherit was created by imperialist and colonial assaults across Asia, Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. The post-Reformation enclosure of common lands for private sale, the globalism that was set into motion with the explosion of maritime trade, and the conquest of space through virtual means: All these things have historically been wielded as weapons of epistemological violence, tools to occupy, repress, categorise, erase, and severe the connections between indigenous communities and the land. Land only holds value when it is associated with certain rights: How can the rightful owners reclaim their lands and territories?
Today, the histories, realities, and future abysses of territorial occupation must be addressed, yet to say something substantial about the everyday realities of communities resisting occupation requires an effort to understand the “other” as self.
From grassroots workers’ movements in Brazil to indigenous communities in Amazonia and Australia and independence movements in Kurdistan and Okinawa: No terra nullius is a collectively curated film program that brings together multiple viewpoints on land stewardship, self-determination, and colonial resistance. Through a selection of fiction and documentary films that draw a line between different occupied territories across the world and the struggles that unite them, we ask: How can transnational networks of solidarity support and amplify the voices of communities resisting territorial occupation?
Afsun Moshiry is a film curator and cultural activist working and living in Berlin.
Thaís Omine (she/her) is a queer Okinawan-Brazilian visual anthropologist based in Berlin.
Galo E. Rivera (they/he) is an immunologist (Dr. rer. nat), audiovisual artist, and web developer born in Ecuador.
Viviane Tabach is a Brazilian curator and art mediator based in Berlin.
Autonomia e Direito (Autonomy and Entitlement)
O verbo se fez carne (The verb became flesh)
Ziel Karapotó, Brazil 2019, 7 min. Portuguese with English subtitles, digital
Os espíritos só entendem nosso idioma (The spirits just understand our language)
Cileuza Jemjusi, Robert Tamuxi and Valdeilson Jolasi, Brazil 2019, 5 min. Portuguese with English subtitles, digital
A mãe de todas as lutas (The mother of all struggles)
Susanna Lira, Brazil 2020, 84 min. Portuguese with English subtitles, digital
Followed by a conversation moderated by Ana Correa
Amid the turbulence of Brazilian politics and the countless social and environmental setbacks that characterise extreme right-wing governments in Latin American history, indigenous peoples are still resisting and will continue to resist the colonisation of their lands and bodies by the white man. The contemporary scenario brings together people of different races, backgrounds and social classes as they join the struggle for land, for the right to exist and coexist, for autonomy over their movements, and to prevent future environmental catastrophes.
In the experimental short film O verbo se fez carne, indigenous artist Ziel Karapotó uses his body to denounce five centuries of colonisation while in Os espíritos só entendem nosso idioma we encounter a cinematic poem in the nearly extinct language of the Manoki people in the Brazilian Amazon. Finally, A mãe de todas as lutas brings the strength of female leaders in the struggle for land: Maria Zelzuita, survivor of the Eldorado do Carajás massacre, and Shirley Krenak, whose life was cut short by the collapse of the Fundão dam in Mariana, Minas Gerais, which devastated the Rio Doce in 2015. (TO)
Ziel Karapotó is originally from the Karapotó Terra Nova community, São Sebastião – AL, and has a degree in Visual Arts from the Federal University of Pernambuco. He is a multi-artist, cultural producer, curator, performer and audiovisual director. He has lived in Recife (PE) since 2015. He is a member of the research group “Science and Indigenous Art in the Northeast” (CAIN-UFPE) and an artist-researcher in the project “Cultures of Antiracism in Latin America” (CARLA-UFBA). Since 2021, he has been the general coordinator of the Karaxuwanassu Indigenous Association in Urban Context (ASSICUKA). His career is marked by productions and activities in the field of visual arts and audiovisual on the national and international stage.
Cileuza Jemjusi, Robert Tamuxi und Valdeilson Jolasi are young leaders of the Paredão village, of the Manoki indigenous people, members of the Ijã Mytyli Collective of Manoki and Myky Cinema, and “Os Espíritos Só Entendem O Nosso Idioma” is their debut work. The work was conceived at LISA (The Image and Sound Laboratory in Anthropology from the University of São Paulo).
Susanna Lira is a filmmaker with postgraduate degrees in Philosophy, International Law and Human Rights, specializing in criminal biopolitics. She has directed 15 feature films and dozens of shorts and series. Among her most notable films are: A Mãe De Todas As Lutas (2021), Prazer Em Conhecer (2020), Torre Das Donzelas (2018), Mussum, Um Filme Do Cacildis (2018), Legítima Defesa (2017), Clara Estrela (2017); Intolerância. Doc (2016); Mataram Nossos Filhos (2016); Levante! (2015); Damas Do Samba (2015); Porque Temos Esperança (2014); Uma Visita Para Elizabeth Teixeira (2011); Positivas (2010); Contracena (2009); Câmera, Close! (2005). She has a long and renowned career as a director, and has even been honored in several countries: at the Mar del Plata Independent Film Festival 2016 in Argentina, with the exhibition “Susanna Lira – Hasta el limite”; at the Tenemos que ver Festival in Uruguay in 2018 and at the FEMCINE Festival in Chile in 2019.
Ana Catalina Correa is a visual anthropologist and archaeologist whose research revolves around the intersections of art, materiality, and narratives. Her expertise spans historical, social, and media research, complemented by experience in museum and art collections management. Ana’s significant contributions include her involvement in the Narcolombia project, where she explored the circulation of images within the frame of Narco-aesthetics, and the Topographies of Power project, investigating materialities and narratives at the National Police Museum in Bogotá, Colombia. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Anthropology from the University of the Andes and completed her Master’s degree at HMKW. Ana’s passion for research extends to sharing her knowledge as an assistant professor at the Department of Anthropology, Universidad de los Andes, as well as serving as an associate researcher at Universidad Alberto Hurtado and coordinating the Social Conflict and Violence Group at the National University of Colombia.
Okinawa Reversion Day: On the right to memory and autonomy of lands and bodies
Curated by Thaís Omine and Hiromi Toma
Who has the right to decide what, when and how a territory and its human and non-human inhabitants are returned? Why was it taken in the first place? Which bodies are subject to negotiation, sale, trafficking, violence and alienation?
Okinawa (Former Kingdom of Ryukyu), a group of islands to the south of Japan’s largest archipelago, was colonised and annexed by the Japanese Empire in 1879. During the Second World War, the territory experienced the bloodiest military confrontation between Japan and the United States, killing a third of the civilian population and leaving its survivors in a state of devastation. From 1945 to 1972, as a strategic military point for US imperialist ambitions in East Asia and the Pacific, Okinawa was designated a United States territory. On May 15th 1972, Okinawa was “returned” to Japan and incorporated into its geographical domain. Around 70% of US military bases in Asia are located on Okinawa despite widespread dissent.
Reversion Day is therefore a day to remember, reflect and fight for the right to a dignified existence of the native peoples of the Ryukyu Islands over and above imperialist and colonizing interests.
The evening will begin with a mesmerising artistic performance by Riko Sugama, a traditional dancer from Ryukyu, which will be combined with a projection of an animation by Igor Shin, followed by a double screening: Mud Man by acclaimed Okinawan visual artist Chikako Yamashiro which is set in Ryukyu and Jeju (South Korea), both territories controversially occupied by the US army, and MOTOSHINKAKARANNU (Ryukyu for “business without seed money”), a rare feature film by the iconic Nihon Documentary Union, a collective of radical left-wing filmmakers committed to breaking with traditional modes of filmmaking. Filmed in Okinawa amidst the social unrest surrounding reversion, it is composed of footage about the ongoing US military presence and conversations with sex workers, gang members and tourists.
Meanwhile, the foyer will host an audiovisual installation by Okinawan-Brazilian artist-researchers Hiromi Toma and Naomi Asato that features reflections from survivors of the Battle of Okinawa now living in Brazil, home to the largest Okinawan diaspora.
FILM PROGRAM
Mud Man
Chikako Yamashiro, Japan 2017, 26 min. Uchinaaguchi, Jeju with English subtitles, digital
沖縄エロス外伝 モトシンカカランヌー (MOTOSHINKAKARANNU)
Nihon Documentarist Union, Japan 1971, 84 min. Japanese and Uchinaaguchi with English subtitles, digital
ARTISTS
Hiromi Toma. Uchinaanchu-Brazilian. Graduated in Accounting at FEA-USP and Fashion at Senac. Her main work is as Hajichiaa, tattoo artist and independent researcher of Hajichi – ancestral tattoo of Okinawan women (tattooed more than 120 women in São Paulo, Brasília, Campo Grande, Toronto, Vancouver, Seattle and Los Angeles). Founder of the Hajichiaa collective. Costume designer at Núcleo Lúcia Kakazu. She creates as a gesture of prayer to her ancestors. She has recently been investigating the sweat in her hands (for having hyperhidrosis) in the ŪTŌTU series as a symptom of the issues that cross generations (colonization, imperialism, stereotypes, silencing). In the rubbing of the hands in a gesture of prayer of the yutás (Okinawanas shamans), they cry the ghosts of the past, leaving in evidence traces and scars of unspoken words and gestures not carried out by the impositions and prohibitions on the bodies of their ancestors.
Riko Sugama is a traditional dancer from the Ryukyu Islands whose dance performances beautifully showcase the unique traditions and customs of the region.
Igor Shin is an animation artist who has studied São Paulo, Okinawa, and Cologne. In 2016, he co-founded VAMOS-Animation.
NDU. Active from 1968 to 1973, the NDU was a collective of radical leftist filmmakers, an offshoot of the intense youth activism in Japan at the time. The group was so committed to breaking traditional modes of film production and forming non-hierarchal structures that they eschewed individualism almost entirely — everyone who was a part of it was anonymous and uncredited in their work. The NDU’s population ranged from several dozen to hundreds of members over the course of its brief but fruitful lifetime. (text by Dan Schindel, from Hyperallergic)
Naomi Asato, a Brazilian uchinanchu from the Ryukyu Minyo Hozonkai Filial Brasil sanshin group and the Olga Benario Women’s Movement, both in São Paulo. She is currently studying Social Sciences at the University of São Paulo (USP).
Como Podemos Fazer Isso Juntos? (How can we do it together?)
After becoming an independent country, Brazil inherited many structures from its colonial past, including a plantation economy and a political system open to exploitation by its white, bourgeois elite. Today, the country’s population is largely concentrated in urban centres along the coast, while the majority of the territory is exploited by intensive agriculture owned by oligarchs who operate outside of the law. Public policy regarding public space still favours the privileged bourgeois elite, whilst ignoring the needs of the majority.
In this double-screening, we travel to two distinct locations: Eldorado dos Carajás, a territory which symbolises the struggle for land, and São Paulo, the biggest metropolis in South America. In Fala da Terra, the Coletivo Banzeiros brings the magic of Brazilian theatre to the Youth of the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST) southeast of Pará, the region where the Eldorado dos Carajás Massacre took place in 1996. Since being founded in 1984, the self organised MST movement has focused on knowledge sharing as a means to build constructive conversations within Brazilian society. Para Onde Voam as Feiticeiras documents street performances which engage with audiences from marginalised urban minorities. Calling into question the negotiation between the filmmakers and the peripheral artists by focusing on the creative process, the film traces the daily struggles of the marginalised as they navigate a hostile society.
Fala da Terra (Voice of the Earth)
Benjamin de Burca and Bárbara Wagner, Brazil 2022 19 min. Portuguese with English subtitles, DCP
Para Onde Voam as Feiticeiras (Southern Sorceress)
Eliane Caffé, Carla Caffé and Beto Amaral, Brazil 2018, 89 min. Portuguese with English subtitles, DCP
Eliane Caffé (born 1961) is a Brazilian filmmaker. Born in São Paulo, Caffé got a Psychology degree from the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo in 1985 and a master’s degree from Universidad Autónoma de Madrid in 1992.[1] Caffé directed some short films in the beginning of her career. Her first feature film, Kenoma, from 1997, was exhibited at the 55th Venice Film Festival, and won the Soleil d’or in the 20th Biarritz Film Festival, among other awards.
Chão (Landless)
curated by Galo E. Rivera & Thais Omine
Avó and PC dream for a piece of land where they can apply healthier, ecologically conscious agricultural practices and improve their working conditions. In Chão, these dreams connect with the struggle of the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST, Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra in Portuguese) and their attempts to occupy land owned by large industrial agricultural complexes. The MST, a grassroots organisation in Brazil with one and a half million members, actively occupies large swathes of territory to advocate for a land reform that allocates land to agricultural workers committed to ecological and ethical agriculture. Freitas’ documentary reinstates the need for massive collective social efforts to achieve land reforms that acknowledge the intersection of land ownership and use with social justice by documenting a local struggle in Goias, Brazil over a period of four years.
Chão (Landless)
Camila Freitas, Brazil 2019, 110 Min., OV with English subs, DCP
With an opening performance by
Luan Caja is an intuitive, multimedia artist who explores performance and ritual song as a process of self-healing. He is currently studying Fine Arts / Sculpture at the Weißensee Kunsthochschule Berlin. His ‘archive of micro-worlds’, which he observes through his microscope to discover the untold stories of the small elements of nature, is also an important source for his drawings and titles of his works. In 2019, he was honoured to represent Amazonas with his work O Buraco at the Municipal Art Museum of Curitiba. His recent exhibitions include Fire and Flame, Backhaus Projects, Berlin, 2024 and Pigeon in the Organ, Galiläa Kirche, Berlin, 2024. Caja lives and works in Berlin.
November 2023
– TOPIAS: On Ethnography, Auto Etnography and Ethnofiction: a look at contemporary visual anthropology from the Global South »
Curated by Thaís Omine, with live performances by South-Korean artists Yoonsung and Aigo
SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA, Berlin, Germany
Sol Negro (Black Sun)
Laura Huertas Millán, Colombia, France 2016, 43 min. Spanish with English subtitles
Emails To My Little Sister
Solomon Mekonen, Ethiopia, Germany 2018, 35 min. Amharic with English subtitles
“Every decolonizing process is a self-decolonization”, Alexander Ocaña and María Isabel López
Sol Negro is as evocative of solar eclipse as it is of the “dark spleen” which doctors, all through Antiquity, used to attribute to melancholic and suicidal drives, especially as they affected artists. Through discreet and elliptical staging, Laura Huertas Millán presents her aunt Antonia’s multi-faceted character in an ethnofiction piece that merges real dialogues between her mother and herself, as well as a delicate portrayal of family bonds and fate. In Emails to My Little Sister the process of becoming a Black man in Berlin is reflected in email conversations with Solomon Mekonen’s sister Tsion. His thoughts, concerns and anthropological observations on the phenomenology of Western blackness are exchanged with the audience while diving into his sister’s daily life in Ethiopia, a reality he does not belong to anymore.
aigo(아이고)’s music touches on punk/rock and destroys the borders in-between with a violent and joyful energy. With Inky’s voice & keyboard and Jay’s drums, Aigo portrays a funky dimension of love about queer life in Berlin. YouTube channel
Yoonsung is a singer and Folk singer-songwriter from South Korea performing the opening act. YouTube channel