A Magic Thread / Um Fio Mágico

This thesis paper is written in support of my short documentary film Um Fio Mágico / A Magic Thread which combines different familial and historical narratives. In order to better understand the possibilities of living openly as a queer individual and to gain a stronger sense of my ancestral history, this thesis explores the parallels between the journeys of my ancestors and the contemporary journeys of my family members and myself. The struggles that women in my family have endured in a patriarchal society, for example, and my own search for freedom and happiness are mirrored in the historical struggles that women, black, queer, and Indigenous people endured in colonial Brazil. The paper interrogates the impact of that historical context on the evolution and migration of my family. It also explores various expressions of the feminine, both in the context of the country’s delayed feminist liberation and the emergence of dynamic queer and trans identities in Brazil.