News

The film São Palco - Cidade Afropolitana, directed by Rose Satiko Gitirana Hikiji and Jasper Chalcraft, and produced in conjunction with the Laboratory of Image and Sound in Anthropology (LISA-USP), received the Ana Maria Galano Award for Best Feature Film during the awards ceremony of the 49th Annual Meeting of ANPOCS.

The film São Palco - Cidade Afropolitana, directed by Rose Satiko Gitirana Hikiji and Jasper Chalcraft, and produced in collaboration with the Laboratory of Image and Sound in Anthropology (LISA-USP), received the Ana Maria Galano Award for Best Feature Film during the awards ceremony of the 49th Annual Meeting of ANPOCS. The film will be available for one month on the event's website:

https://www.encontro2025.anpocs.org.br/conteudo/view?ID_CONTEUDO=1719

São Palco - Cidade Afropolitana is the fourth film resulting…

The film São Palco - Cidade Afropolitana, directed by Rose Satiko Gitirana Hikiji and Jasper Chalcraft, and produced in collaboration with the Laboratory of Image and Sound in Anthropology (LISA-USP), received the Ana Maria Galano Award for best feature film during the awards ceremony of the 49th Annual Meeting of ANPOCS. The film will be available for one month on the event's website: https://www.encontro2025.anpocs.org.br/conteudo/view?ID_CONTEUDO=1719

São Palco - Cidade Afropolitana is the fourth film resulting from the anthropologists' research with African artists who arrived in Brazil in the last decade. In the research, conducted in conjunction with the Department of Anthropology at USP, Rose and Jasper follow the protagonists in their artistic pursuits throughout the city of São Paulo. They observe the stages they occupy, the spaces they build with their music, the challenges they…

The September 2025 issue of Pesquisa FAPESP Magazine features two articles on the topic of immigration in Brazil.

The article "Brazil's New Position on the Map of International Migration" highlights how the rigid policies of countries in the Global North have redefined Brazil's position in the geopolitics of international migration. The article cites research conducted by Rose Satiko Gitirana Hikiji and Jasper Chalcraft on the artistic and musical scene of African immigrants in São Paulo, as part of the thematic project "Local Music: New Paths for Ethnomusicology", funded by FAPESP and supported by the Laboratory of Image and Sound in Anthropology (LISA-USP).

Since 2016, researchers have been following artists from several African countries, resulting in the production of four documentaries produced by LISA-USP:  Tabuluja (Acordem!), …

In a new book, an anthropologist reflects on shared research through filmmaking
The book is the result of Rose Satiko's postdoctoral thesis and is available for free download on the USP Open Books Portal.

The relationship between anthropologists and research partners is a key theme in anthropology and has been widely discussed over the decades. In her book "Filmar o musicar – Ensaios de antropologia compartilhada", anthropologist Rose Satiko Gitirana Hikiji reflects on her relationships with her research partners over the course of more than two decades of work analyzing and producing ethnographic films. Hikiji is a professor in the Department of Anthropology at the School of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences (FFLCH) at USP and coordinator of the Image and Sound Laboratory in Anthropology (LISA). The book "Filmar o musicar – Ensaios de antropologia compartilhada" was published online and made available for free in …

The Laboratory of Image and Sound in Anthropology (LISA) is a pioneer in the humanities for hosting a multi-user equipment center on the USP multi-platform. Administered by the USP Dean of Research and Innovation, the platform allows centers or laboratories with high-cost or technically complex equipment to register and promote shared use by various research groups and institutions. It can also serve private companies and the external community. This model fosters interdisciplinarity and exchange between researchers while expanding access to specialized technologies.

Currently, the USP Multi Platform has over 140 registered centers from five partner institutions: USP, UNESP, UNIFESP, IPEN, and HCFMUSP. LISA stands out among them all as the only center in the humanities to offer specialized services and equipment.

LISA's activities

Affiliated with the Department of Anthropology at FFLCH (DA-FFLCH), LISA is a center for research, documentation, and training in…

The book “Filmar o musicar – Ensaios de antropologia compartilhada”, by Rose Satiko Gitirana Hikiji, professor at the Department of Anthropology and coordinator of LISA-USP, has just been published on the Open Books Portal of the University of São Paulo (USP), where it is available for download.

The work presents various musical endeavors in the city of São Paulo, which the author and her research partners approach with cameras and recorders in hand. These actions are led by young participants in a social music education project, by hip-hop and funk artists in Cidade Tiradentes, and by African musicians newly arrived in this megalopolis. Filming the making of music involves transforming research into composition, a process achieved through collaborative processes. In this way, the author rehearses, in good company, Rouchi's dream of sharing anthropology.

“Filmar o musicar – Ensaios de antropologia compartilhada” is part of the ABCD Agenda 2030 Collection and is…

The Image and Sound Laboratory in Anthropology (LISA-USP) releases the presentation film for the exhibition "Trajetórias Cruzadas" (Crossed Trajectories), which brought together photographs by Claudia Andujar, Lux Vidal, and Maureen Bisilliat. The exhibition was on display at the Maria Antonia Center - USP from October 2024 to February 2025.

The three women are photographers whose careers were marked by World War II, experiences in various countries, and knowledge of several languages. In Brazil, their journeys intertwined, revealing a Brazil little known even to Brazilians. Their activism for indigenous rights remains remarkable to this day.

Curated by anthropologists Sylvia Caiuby Novaes and Fabiana Bruno, the exhibition was featured in Folha de S. Paulo, and the article is available at this link.

Film Credits:

Soundtrack
Mena Barsáa (Baya Barsáa) -…

The feature film "As Far as the Eye Can See" will have its world premiere at the 53rd Gramado Film Festival and will compete for the Kikito, the event's crowning symbol. The festival, a benchmark in the consolidation of Brazilian cinema, will take place from August 13 to 23, 2025, in the municipality of Gramado, in the Serra Gaúcha region.

The news was featured on the Campinas City Hall website, which also published an article about the making of the documentary. Produced by Cisco Laboratories, a documentary production company based in Campinas, São Paulo, the film, co-directed with Hidalgo Romero, is a product of Alice Villela's postdoctoral research at the Department of Anthropology at the University of São Paulo (USP), within the scope of the FAPESP Thematic Project (Grant: 16/05318-7): "Local Musicar: New Paths for Ethnomusicology," coordinated by Suzel Reily of the University of Campinas (UNICAMP).

"As Far as the Eye Can See" is a feature-length film (77 min) that tells the story of the struggle of the Kariri-Xocó people of Alagoas state for their lands. In the film, three generations of Kariri-Xocó Indigenous people join forces on an expedition to explore their lands, a memorial to their people, expropriated over centuries of colonization. Their language, knowledge, and even their rituals were hidden as a survival strategy. Now, armed with cameras, drones, pipes, headdresses, and maracas, they travel the geographical landmarks of their territory in a road movie that prepares for new land reclamations. The film was co-directed by Hidalgo Romero and produced by Laboratório Cisco, a documentary production company based in Campinas, São Paulo.

The work is the result of research Alice Villela conducted during her postdoctoral studies at the Department of Anthropology at USP on the relationship between the struggle for land and Kariri-Xocó music (cf. Small, 1998), under…

Memory is more than a collection of records about the past—it is a field of disputes, affections, and meanings in constant transformation. Who can narrate history? What deserves to be remembered? Where and how are traces of the lived experience preserved? These are some of the questions that permeate the work of the Laboratory of Image and Sound in Anthropology (LISA-USP), which works to preserve, organize, and disseminate audiovisual and documentary collections related to anthropology and the humanities. More than simply preserving materials, LISA cares for narratives, subjectivities, and ways of seeing the world, making archival practice also an ethical and political exercise.

Since its founding in 1991 by Sylvia Caiuby Novaes, the Laboratory of Image and Sound in Anthropology (LISA) has established itself as an important center dedicated to the preservation and production of audiovisual materials related to the…