Bahía of All The Saints

Retrospective of Jana Boková

"I shot the film Bahía of All the Saints with a Brazilian crew in Salvador in the Brazilian state of Bahía. Every shoot is difficult, but the conditions during carnival in northeastern Brazil were exceptionally challenging. There you cannot move freely with your crew and equipment through the streets; you must have a strategy like in a battle, otherwise you will lose your people and camera on the first day. Poverty and violence in Bahía are enormous, but out of nowhere you can find yourself among incredibly gentle and sensitive people. I wanted to capture how Afro-Catholic syncretism actually works: I was searching for faith within faith." Jana Boková