Universiteit Leiden

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Film screening and Q&A

Ñii Ñu’u - Sacred Skin

Date
Monday 13 November 2023
Time
Address
Lipsius
Cleveringaplaats 1
2311 BD Leiden
Room
3.07

We would like to cordially invite you to CIAS Event: the screening of the movie Ñii Ñu’u - Sacred Skin (synopsis below). After the movie there will be time for a Q&A Session with film maker Omar Aguilar Sánchez.

Everyone is welcome!

Film synopsis

Mixtec codices, the movie. This film is about the Ñuu Savi People (People of the Rain, Mixtec People) and how they are recovering and re-appropriating their cultural memory through their ancestral pictorial writing contained in the Mixtec codices.

The codices are sacred books or “Ñii Ñu’u”, in the Mixtec language, that contain the history and cosmovision of the Ñuu Savi People. Unfortunately, because of the legacy of colonization today none of the Mixtec codices that survived is in the hands of the community.

This film shows how, after 500 years, the director and Mixtec scholar has interpreted the codices based on the knowledge of his own language and culture. Being aware of his belonging to the Ñuu Savi, the director started to share and to teach child, young and the communities how to read the codices, giving workshops and recreating the pictorial writing again to support their identity, with practical implications in the own community with the creation of an official logo.

This work has been inspirational for other Mixtec communities and the most important shows the commitment of an indigenous scholar with his own people, challenging to the Western view.

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