This experimental short reflects on the dangers facing Indigenous communities—the erasure of their traditions, the razing of their territory and the wiping away of their culture.
Director Bio:
Iván Jaripio is from the Embera community of Piriati. Since 2013, he has been studying film in order to promote the rights of Indigenous people so that their voices are heard. He is part of Dji Ta Wagadi, an Embera youth cultural collective. Jaripio accompanied the Guardians of the Forest tour through Europe to COP23, filming and editing.
El Encierro / The Confinement
Title:
El Encierro / The Confinement
Release Date:
2012
Runtime:
16 minutes
Director:
Emanuel Rojas (Colombia)
Language:
Wayunaiki with Spanish subtitles
Synopsis:
A young Wayuu woman undergoes a traditional ritual to make the transition to adulthood. Her confinement marks her entry as a new woman of her community.
Director Bio:
Emanuel Rojas received his degree in Television and Film from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, where he first started working with Ciro Guerra and Cristina Gallego, doing film photography for La sombra del Caminante. He has continued to collaborate with both on their three latest films, including the Oscar-nominated El abrazo de la serpiente/Embrace of the Serpent, where he worked on camera. As director and cinematographer, Rojas has made dozens of short films and documentaries around indigeneity in Guajira, the Amazon, the Sierra Nevada, and the Cauca region of Colombia—all of which are reflected in the photobook Luces Mágicas, published in France. Currently, he is preparing his first feature length film titled Fronteras Vivientes.
El Destetado/The Foreign Body
Title:
El Destetado/The Foreign Body
Release Date:
2018
Runtime:
19 minutes
Director:
Héctor Silva Núñez (France/Venezuela)
Language:
Spanish and Wayuunaiki with English subtitles
Synopsis:
Jairo is a Native young man from Venezuela who was born with no nipples. Distanced from the customs of his people, he explores a male ideal to belong to in the city.
Director Bio:
Héctor Silva Núñez was born in Cabimas, Venezuela. He studied scriptwriting at the School of Film and Television of San Antonio de los Baños (EICTV), Cuba. His short film Anfibio (15') premiered at Cinéfondation in Cannes. His second short film The Foreign Body (18') had its World Premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). Héctor is currently writing and developing his first feature film.
Week Five May 21 to 24
The Hemispheric Institute and the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage of the Smithsonian Institution present Indigenous Cinema 2021.
In the midst of the digital turn and the global crises brought about over the past year, Indigenous artists and activists have found new spaces for their works to be more broadly seen. Indigenous media has been growing over the past four decades, documenting community practices, but also exploring new modes of expression through a range of themes, languages and genres. As new, layered forms of understanding identity emerge, film has proven to be an adaptable medium to explore the interlacing of Indigenous experiences that are in motion, seeking wholeness despite fragmentation, and not restricted to the binaries of urban and rural, ancestral and contemporary, female and male-and more. What we are seeing today is a multiplicity of Indigenous voices and modes of storytelling, told through the moving image. We are pleased to bring a sampling of this new tide of Indigenous cinemas, alternating recent shorts and feature films, some of them made in New York, and others from across the continent.
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HemiTV is the Hemispheric Institute’s portal for live streaming and virtual programming, developed for the Zoom era and beyond.
