Plot

The Portuguese poet and anthropologist, Ruy Cinatti, and his nomadic experience in East Timor: while preserving the cultural identity of the People and its territory, he becomes a Timorese.

"I am totally in love with Timor!" enthusiastically stated the Portuguese poet, anthropologist and agronomist, Rui Cinatti, when arriving at the island (1915/1986). Between 1946 and 1974 he carried out a nomadic experiment, building an affectionate and lasting relationship with Timor-Leste's people and territory. The cultural identity he intends to protect is threatened by colonial oppression and by the decline of the Portuguese Empire. While rejecting this circumstances, Ruy Cinatti reaches out to the people and its tribes, doing architectonic, ethnographic, artistic surveys and anthropological research: registering oral texts and photographs, filming people and landscapes, documenting rituals and even making blood oaths with tribal chiefs -Liurais- to gain access to sacred places and becomes a Timorese. In several voices - with various materials and mediums which entwine and interact as a polyphony - The Flight of The Crocodile - Ruy Cinatti's Timor, through visual and audio harmonies, full of complexity evoke the poet Ruy Cinatti with emotion and beauty, crafting new meanings and rimes.—Fernando Vendrell

"I am totally in love with Timor!" enthusiastically stated the Portuguese poet, anthropologist and agronomist, Rui Cinatti, when arriving at the island (1915/1986).

Between 1946 and 1974 he carried out a nomadic experiment, building an affectionate and lasting relationship with Timor-Leste's people and territory. The cultural identity he intends to protect is threatened by colonial oppression and by the decline of the Portuguese Empire. While rejecting this circumstances, Ruy Cinatti reaches out to the people and its tribes, doing architectonic, ethnographic, artistic surveys and anthropological research: registering oral texts and photographs, filming people and landscapes, documenting rituals and even making blood oaths with tribal chiefs -Liurais- to gain access to sacred places and becomes a Timorese.

His poetry aspires the cult like power of the primordial texts collected on the island, of sentimental and experiential nature. The titles are unequivocal: Um Cancioneiro Para Timor (A Songbook to Timor), Uma Sequência Timorense (A Timorese Sequence), Paisagens Timorenses com Vultos (Timorese Landscapes with Shadows), Timor-Amor (Timor-Love)... Ruy Cinatti's life fades molded in his research and creation.

Post Abril 1974 revolution, during East Timor independence process and just before the violent occupation of the territory by Indonesia, an immense angst invades him, leading him to live his "exile" in an almost religious Christian Calvary.

In several voices - with various research materials and mediums which entwine and interact as a polyphony - The Flight of The Crocodile - Ruy Cinatti's Timor evokes Ruy Cinatti through visual and audio harmonies, full of complexity, emotion and beauty, crafting meanings and rimes. Weaved as the allegoric construction of a Timor house, a cult like structure of communicating levels, reveling its profound cosmic symbolism.

Ruy Cinatti used to say: "The house is an image of the world; its roof is the sky". "The building and inauguration of a home equate to a beginning, a new life: for the oeuvre to last and "live" it should be animated, i.e., it should receive at the same time a life and a soul. The transference of the soul is possible only through a blood sacrifice."

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