Global IssuesCHILE: Festival to Showcase Films on Native Peoples
Thanks to the growing number of films by and about indigenous peoples, over 90 movies, mainly from Latin America, will be screened and voted on by spectators at the First Chilean Indigenous Peoples' Film Festival in the Pacific port city of Valparaíso.
'Indigenous people have long been demonised by the media,' Chilean filmmaker Nelson Cabrera, director of the Jun. 21-26 festival organised by the Collective Cultural Centre Cinema Forum in Valparaíso, 120 kilometres west of Santiago, told IPS.
The media portray 'indigenous people who fight for their territory as terrorists, but they don't mention that those territories contain oil and minerals that transnational corporations want. And the state is an accomplice to the plunder,' Cabrera said.
The Chilean Indigenous Peoples' Film Festival was organised in response to this situation, encouraged by the significant increase in the number of documentary films about native peoples being made lately in this country and the region as a whole, he said.
In Chile there are few opportunities 'to see what is really happening to indigenous people in this country and the world,' said Cabrera, who is also director of the 'Cine Otro' Human Rights and Social Cinema Festival, organised by the Cine Forum in Valparaíso since 2007.
A precedent to the Festival was the screening of films about indigenous peoples organised by the Collective Cultural Centre last year, where over 40 films were shown. But Cabrera, who is of Quechua descent on his mother's side, said other factors motivated him to call indigenous and non-indigenous filmmakers all over the world to this filmfest.
He realised that Chileans in general knew nothing about the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, adopted in 2007, which establishes the right of ethnic groups to autonomy and self-government.
Cabrera was also sceptical about the country's capacity to implement International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention 169 concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries, which was ratified by Chile in 2008.
He said he plans to hold discussions on these topics, as well as on current political events and processes in South America in which indigenous peoples are involved, at the forthcoming festival, which has close to 20 films from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Sweden and other countries entered in competition.
The competing films, most of which were made by non-indigenous directors, are divided into four thematic groups: Territory, Worldview, Memory and Identity, and Indigenous Medicine, to which the category of Heritage Archive will probably be added.
One notable film is the recently premièred Chilean documentary 'La Voz Mapuche' (The Voice of the Mapuche) by journalists Andrea Henríquez and Pablo Fernández, who visited Mapuche communities in Argentina and Chile to film testimonies about their ancestral struggle for their land and culture.
Other films that stand out are 'Nuestra Historia está en la Tierra' (Our History is in the Earth) by Venezuelan director Eliezer Castro, 'La Nación Mapuche' (The Mapuche Nation) by Swiss filmmaker Fausta Quattrini, 'Hermana Constitución' (Sister Constitution) by Bolivian director Soledad Domínguez, and 'Hay Mana' (There Is a Way) by Chilean filmmaker Wladimir Rupcich, about the Rapa Nui people of Easter Island. Retrospectives on indigenous peoples in Colombia and Brazil will also be screened.
The general audience at the Festival will be asked to choose the winning film in each thematic area. The symbolic prize is an electroplated trophy etched with a likeness of Moisés Huentelaf, a leftwing Mapuche leader murdered by landowners in the southern Chilean city of Temuco in 1971.
'We think interest has grown (among Chilean filmmakers in documenting the reality of indigenous peoples, especially the Mapuche) because after five centuries the ancestral wisdom of these peoples, who have always sought harmony between human beings and the natural environment, is finally beginning to be appreciated,' Andrea Henríquez, co-director with Pablo Fernández of the documentary 'The Voice of the Mapuche,' told IPS.
'There are very few opportunities (to screen these works) at present. Usually indigenous people's lives are shown from a 'folklore' angle, but when an attempt is made to address their struggles and fundamental problems, the doors begin to close. Organising festivals like the one in Valparaíso is a very positive step,' Fernández said.
In Chile, organisations defending indigenous peoples' rights have condemned the authorities and the justice system for persecuting local and foreign journalists and documentary-makers interested in filming Mapuche communities involved in conflicts over land.
The Association of Chilean Documentary Makers (ADOC) is particularly concerned about the case of filmmaker Elena Varela, who was arrested a year ago on charges of 'illegal association with intent to commit an offence,' in connection with two robberies committed in 2004 and 2005 in southern Chile. She is now free on bail.
At the time of her arrest, Varela, who declares herself innocent of the charges, was working on a documentary about the Mapuche people. Amnesty International and other human rights groups believe the arrest was an attempt to halt the filmmaker’s investigations into land conflicts, and to intimidate her and the Mapuche people.
The police seized abundant material from her home, including over 300 of her tapes containing interviews with indigenous people who had no connection with the robberies in question.
The robberies are blamed on the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR), an insurgent group that was created in 1965 and virtually destroyed by the 1973-1990 military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, although there are now attempts to revive it as a political organisation.
At a Jun. 3 rally, ADOC demanded the return of all Varela's confiscated film material, as only one-quarter of it has been handed back by the authorities.
'Not only are the struggles of indigenous peoples treated as criminal activity, but those who attempt to document this reality on film are also being persecuted,' said Henríquez.
Jeannette Paillán, a well-known Mapuche filmmaker, said screenings and festivals like the one in Valparaíso are always 'positive,' as they are a showcase for the ever expanding production of audiovisuals about indigenous peoples. But she criticised the quality of most of the Chilean and Latin American films, with some exceptions.
'I have mixed feelings. As a director, I think it is important to have outlets where productions about indigenous peoples can be shown,' but Latin American documentaries of this kind tend to focus only on high-profile conflicts, and they tend to represent indigenous people as poor, suffering victims, Paillán told IPS.
In her view, non-indigenous filmmakers 'do not dig deeper' to discover the richness and diversity of native peoples.
'We are trying to use images and communication techniques to show indigenous people as more fully human, more modern. We don't want to continue portraying them as victims,' said Paillán, the director of the short Mapuche fiction film 'Perimontum' and the current general coordinator of the Latin American Coordinating Committee for Indigenous Peoples' Filmmaking and Communication (CLACPI).
So far, CLACPI has organised nine itinerant festivals of indigenous cinema in the region. The latest was held in Bolivia last year, and the next will take place in October 2010 in Ecuador.
'Our project is of a more political nature and aims to spark dynamic processes in several areas,' not just bringing movies to a wider audience but also ensuring skills are transferred to indigenous people, Paillán said.
Although CLACPI festivals are open to both indigenous and non-indigenous filmmakers, the organisation itself is made up only of native communities, she said.
According to Paillán, there are increasing numbers of indigenous people, especially young people in the cities, who are willing to brave the field of documentary filmmaking. In October this year, CLACPI will be organising a meeting in Chile of native women filmmakers from Latin America and around the world.
'Non-indigenous filmmakers can make a contribution so long as they see and present original peoples as equals, and particularly as people who have a great deal to teach Western or European cultures. Otherwise, instead of contributing, they perpetuate the old stereotypes and stigmas,' said Fernández, the co-director of 'The Voice of the Mapuche.'
'They should also help indigenous filmmakers to carry on making their own documentaries and films,' Henríquez concluded.
© Inter Press Service (2009) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service