Venezuelan Indigenous Film Series

Throughout history, while anthropologists and documentary makers have capitalized on film about indigenous cultures, other types of filmmakers have represented elements of these cultures as an exotic product. This Venezuelan Indigenous Film Series is a retrospective which will show how the diversity of indigenous peoples’ cultural identity in our country has been represented.

By showing films of different indigenous communities in the community centers of the National Film Board (Cinemateca Nacional) of Zulia and Amazonas, we will have the opportunity to discuss how indigenous peoples have been filmed from a western perspective, as in the case of the cinematographic discourse of the documentaries by Manuel de Pedro in La iniciación de un Chamán, Jacobo Penzo with En Territorio extranjero, and Carlos Azpurua with his provocative and critical film Amazonas el negocio de este mundo, among others. Luis Alberto Lamata’s cinematographic discourse in Jericó is especially noteworthy.

The Venezuelan Indigenous Film Series will offer a space in which we will have the opportunity to see several films produced by indigenous peoples themselves. This audiovisual work is a creation by indigenous people from their own world view, with unique expressions, made by indigenous who tell us their own stories so that they are no longer observed through the clinical lens of the academic. Examples are Jorge Montiel’s Socuy lucha por la Tierra, Sabino Romero’s Luchamos por la tierra Yukpa, Luis González y Astrid Arévalo’s Ayulaa jipü, Leiqui Uriana’s Jepirra Paraíso de los Wayuu, David Hernández Palmar’s Los dueños del Agua and works by many other indigenous directors who have taken advantage of audiovisual tools to benefit their communities as part of their ongoing struggle, the real strength behind the indigenous film movement in Venezuela.

The range of titles draws attention to the skills of different directors from their own critical approach, to give us a panoramic view of indigenous cinema in Venezuela: the different ways in which the realities of each indigenous community are reflected, their beliefs and values; but we will go beyond this. We will ask what possibilities cinema, which contributes to the formation of the mind and behavior of society, offers us in understanding cultures. It is important in this context to state that this screening is just the first step in compiling important material about indigenous topics made by indigenous and non-indigenous, because there is a long way to go in collecting materials throughout the country that will contribute to this initiative.

This series is above all a process of recovering social justice for first nations peoples in the country, due in large part to the process through which Venezuela has lived since 1999, which has placed a high priority on indigenous rights, and recognition of their traditions and community organization, much of which has been filmed but rarely shown within their own communities, and to other peoples.