Doc Corner: 'The Territory' at EarthX Festival in Dallas
By Glenn Dunks
The 2022 EarthX Film Festival is four days of film, music and interactive environmental programs and events set in the heart of Dallas Arts District, May 12-15. We were able to watch a couple of the titles including big ticket Sundance winner The Territory as well as Tigre Gente.
The first thing to notice in The Territory (tickets here) is its beauty. Filming within the Amazon rainforest will do that, of course. As will having a cinematographer for a director. But Alex Pritz’s first feature documentary as a director very quickly transcends whatever lush imagery is immediately front and center, bursting quite early with rage at the situation its Indigenous subjects are being forced to endure. New images emerge, those of burning and destruction and greed as those who live independently defiantly take protection of their block of land into their own hands.
This is an environmental film set within an increasingly small patch that—as the film begins—is the land of the Uru-eu-wau-wau people, provided under rights agreements with the Brazilian government. But the impending election threatens this life of serenity when anti-environmental rhetoric from Jair Bolsonaro threatens to bring chainsaws, bulldozers and forest burning to this idyllic slice of paradise.