Fejos Postdoctoral Fellow: Lucas Marques

The film project On Ogun’s Railroad was born from a series of encounters. First, from my own encounter with José Adário dos Santos, better known as “Zé Diabo”. At age 76, Zé Diabo is one of the last and best-known orisha blacksmiths in Salvador, Bahia, as well as a priest of Candomblé, an Afro-Brazilian religion, and a renowned contemporary black artist. He produces sublime iron sculptures known as orisha tools, artifacts that, after a series of technical and ritual preparations, become the materialized gods themselves – which in Candomblé are called orishas. This encounter opened the paths to a more than 12 year long research on techniques and relationships between people, gods and things in African-based religions in Brazil.

The second encounter happened between Safira Moreira, a filmmaker committed to Afro-diasporic memory, archives and black narratives that could not be told, and I, an anthropologist interested in religion, technique and visual anthropology. This encounter took place during the production of a short film called Alágbedé, focused on Zé Diabo’s daily life in his workshop. The short film won awards at different film festivals and won first place in the Pierre Verger Award from the Brazilian Anthropology Association. After this first partnership, and still motivated to tell the story of Zé Diabo and his work, we thought about making a documentary feature-length film that would combine our different interests and the stories we followed in Zé Diabo’s workshop. A film that, while narrating the creative process of Zé Diabo and his art of creating gods, sought to connect his life and his craft to the memory of Afro-diasporic technologies, religion and the history of black families in the diaspora. In short, a film that showed how technique, creation and memory cannot be thought separately.

To work with iron, to carry out what he calls Ogun’s jabá, Zé Diabo states that he must follow the “path of Ogun”, paying homage to this orisha. Ogun, in Candomblé religion, is the blacksmith orisha, patron of technical knowledge, technology and war. He is the second orisha of the pantheon of the Afro-Brazilian gods, preceded by Exu, to which he is closely linked. All production must pass through the path of Ogun, which makes him the lord of the roads. In this regard, the railroad is his domain, and it is there that most of the offerings for this orisha are delivered. Zé Diabo claims an ancestral relationship with Ogun, stating that his grandfather and his grandfather’s father were blacksmiths, and both had Ogun in their path. This relationship refers directly to the Yoruba people and the sacred work of African blacksmiths. Taking Zé Diabo’s propositions seriously, the film seeks to follow Ogun’s path, crossing Zé Diabo’s autobiographical narratives with the creative process that transforms iron into a god, connecting different paths, techniques and territories in Brazil and Africa. Therefore, the film is not just about Zé Diabo, it begins with him and follows the paths of Ogun, the iron orisha.

During the fellowship period, we carried out research work to write the script, which involved contact with researchers who work with blacksmiths in Nigeria and Benin, as well as meticulous work searching for and selecting archives about Zé Diabo and the craft of the blacksmiths in Brazil. This work, which took place between January and May 2024, had the support of the Government of the State of Bahia, through a law to encourage audiovisual production and script development. Due to the extensive fieldwork that I had already carried out with Zé Diabo, we had countless audiovisual recordings that ended up making part of the film’s narrative and serving as a basis for the new footage that we recorded.

In August  2024, new footage shooting started. We filmed several processes the iron undergoes: from the factory to the junkyard and going through new technical and ritual transformations, until it arrives to a sacred space (a terreiro) to become an orisha, a god. In addition, we followed Zé Diabo’s daily life in his terreiro, in his workshop, in Ladeira da Conceição da Praia, and at the Feira de São Joaquim, the largest religious articles’ market in Salvador, Bahia. Fulfilling one of the film’s main objectives, we took Zé Diabo to those places that constitute his spiritual and professional trajectory, such as the city of Cachoeira, in the countryside of Bahia, where his paternal family came from, the Church of Nossa Senhora da Conceição da Praia, of which he is a member of the fraternity, and the afoxé cultural group Filhos de Gandhy, of which he is a member and also produces the agogôs, musical instruments played by the group. We were also able to film with him during a visit to the Afro Brazil Museum, the main museum of black art in Brazil, located in São Paulo, where Zé Diabo has numerous works of art on display. There, we recorded an interview with him addressing the tense relationship between the artistic recognition of his work and the fact that those works have a sacred life. Finally, we filmed several encounters with other blacksmiths and religious leaders, all driven by Zé Diabo.

It’s important to highlight that the film is part of a larger project, which involves the construction of a curatorial proposal based on respect for the ways in which Candomblé members want to exhibit these religious artefacts and the forces that permeate them. The reflections portrayed in the film will contribute to the construction of this collective project, which is integrated into a digital platform (https://alagbede.com.br/) that seeks to tell the story of Zé Diabo and the orisha blacksmiths in Brazil.

As mentioned before, the project was born from a series of encounters. Throughout its production, however,  we realized that the film had the potential to be a kind of “catalyst for encounters”. Taking Zé Diabo to visit the places which made up his memory and paths while being in touch with other blacksmiths and priests in Brazil and in Africa, we realized that these encounters had the potential to create something, to tell other stories about black crafts and cultures that persisted over time. The film then gradually expanded and became these encounters themselves. As it often happens in Candomblé religion, the creative process became more important than the final product itself.

To complete this project, the idea is to carry out a second stage of filming, scheduled to take place between July and September 2025, with the support of the Brazilian Government’s Audiovisual Incentive Law, and which will consist of Zé Diabo going to Nigeria and Benin to encounter other African blacksmiths and religious priests, especially from the Yoruba, Ewe and Fon peoples. Rather than a genealogical search for roots, the intention is that this encounter be guided by the technical resonances and creative mnemonics that arise from the encounter itself. After this second stage of filming, the documentary will enter the post-production phase: editing, mixing, sound and colorization. This phase is scheduled to take place between September and December 2025. The film is expected to premiere at film festivals in the first half of 2026.