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Another sequence generated during filming of "The Balance' that deserves special attention.

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Aptly nicknamed 'The Scream' (O Grito) this Aparaká - a spirit migrating towards illumination - visited "Ilê Egungun Obá Nilê", and is aesthetically different from the other aparaká that appear in the temple.

Designed by young kids from a smaller Egungun temple in São Paulo, the Aparaká's design met with some resistance. One possible reason for this is it was not accepted by the group it was intended to 'abduct'. (To quote Gell: "Abduction is used as the basis one gets from art to agency in the sense of a theory of how works of art can inspire a sensus communis, or the commonly-held views that a characteristic of a given society because they are shared by everyone in that society.[37])

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The piece fails to be an 'agent' possibly because it mimicked and borrowed from popular film culture ( the film "Scream", which successfully borrowed from Edvard Munch's 'Scream'). It serves as an example of where 'art' and 'agency' do not align in an antropological/religious setting. But perhaps, by removing this footage from its original context and re-locating it in the art-context from which one portion of it originated one can then pose a different kind of question, concerning the plasticity of African and Western interpetations of an anguished spirit's primal scream, in an image where these two visions collide and complement each other.

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Original footage: 2002 (Hi-8) Edited: 2010