Captain Gervásio's Family

The 16-minute black-and-white film is a meditative look at the mediums who communicate with the dead and engage in psychic healing practices at a spiritual centre known as Luz da Verdade (The Light of Truth). Holding hands and facing a magnetiser, they practise a method which they call a ‘magnetic chain’ – a medical treatment based on a unique understanding of disease and health which contradicts our modern understanding and methods. By juxtaposing details of modern Brazilian architecture, famously located in the cities of Brasilia, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, the film relates our modern cities to the twenty astral cities, whose coordinates were mapped inside Brazilian territory by one of Palmelo’s mediums and which have been described as ‘just like those that exist on Earth, but infinitely more perfect’.