Ayoreo Video Project
The Ayoreo Video Project is an experiment in visual anthropology and political advocacy through collaborative video-making with Ayoreo-speaking people. Developed over two years in collaboration with Totobiegosode-Ayoreo leadership and the organization Video Nas Aldeias, the project taught Ayoreo to make their own videos. It began with a video workshop in a remote village, which trained a select group of fourteen Ayoreo from five villages, three sub-groups and both sides of the Bolivia/Paraguay border in the basics of digital filmmaking. The project assisted Ayoreo filmmakers as they conceived, shot and edited videos on the topics and themes of their choice. The result is a set of four feature length films, meant as stand-alone parts of a quartet, that revise previous images of Ayoreo. These include the first three Ayoreo-made videos and an ethnographic documentary about the process. Together, the films allow Ayoreo to tell their own stories about themselves, to speak back to impoverished representations of their humanity, and to facilitate cross-cultural dialogue in a context of violent dispossession. At the same time, the films open new directions for future reflection, research and advocacy.
Films of the Ayoreo Video Project
Farewell to Savage | 2017 | 70 minutes | Lucas Bessire (with Bernard Belisário and Ernesto de Carvalho)
This film uses footage from the video workshop, a drone and archival footage shot by the filmmaker in this place a decade prior to craft a non-linear reflection on the power of visuality to provoke new ways of relating to the world, each other, and alternate versions of ourselves. In visual dialogue with each of the Ayoreo videos, the film documents how the video making process unleashed new potentials and dilemmas for all involved, in ways that pose important questions for anthropological theory, practice and advocacy.
Yiquijmapiedie - Our Ways | 2017 | 52 minutes | Chagabi Etacore
In this quiet reflection on making and belonging, the leader of a band that made first contact in 2004 and two others re-create material objects that were once crucial to survival in the pre-contact forest but that have little use in the present and are thus being forgotten. Working together, the three protagonists show the process of digging up a water root, creating wooden storage containers for water, and making bark ropes for a swing game. They provide subtle commentaries on their activities and instruct younger generations about these practices.
Ore Enominone - Visions | 2017 | 92 minutes | Ajesua Etacoro & Daijnidi Picanerai
This film is an ethnofictional performance about the creation and inhabitation of a dream world in the forest. Created by the survivors of a deadly 1986 first contact, the Totobiegosode protagonists play a fictional version of themselves and share their unique knowledge of traditional foods, practices and beliefs. Blurring the lines between staged reenactments and serious engagements with present challenges, the film opens new spaces for its creators to reflect on the ruptures of the past and to envision a more inhabitable future.
Ujirei - Regeneration | 2017 | 55 minutes | Mateo Sobode Chiqueno
This is a critical meditation on contemporary Ayoreo realities by a 65-year-old Ducodegose man and respected leader who played instrumental roles in his people’s transition from forest to evangelical mission. Filmed over the course of eight months on an evangelical mission, the fragmentary film offers a critique of political marginality and shares one man’s visionary perspective on the destruction and rebirth of Ayoreo society. The film has been widely screened in Latin American Indigenous film festivals, and earned special recognition prizes from 2018 Festival Internacional de Cine y las Artes Indígena de Wallmapu (FICWALLMAPU) and the 2018 Premio Anaconda festival.
General Credits
Producer & Project Coordinator:
Lucas Bessire
Video Workshop Coordinator:
Ernesto de Carvalho
Workshop Advisor:
Kamikiá Kisedje
Workshop Advisor:
Rocio Picanere
Editing Coordinator:
Bernard Belisário
Cultural Advisor:
Chagabi Etacore
Post-Production:
Fábio Menezes and Video Nas Aldeias
This project was made possible in part by financial assistance from a Fejos Fellowship from the Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, as well as from the Ruth Landes Memorial Research Fund, a program of the Reed Foundation, and an Arts and Humanities Faculty Fellowship from the University of Oklahoma.
