From the Heart of the World - The Elder Brothers' Warning [h33t] [groggin]

From The Heart of the World Elder Brothers' Warning [h33t] [groggin]



The book: 'The Elder Brothers' Warning' By Alan Ereira - Tairona Heritage Trust
Copyright Alan Ereira (Standard Copyright License) Edition Second Edition Publisher Tairona Heritage Trust Published September 28, 2011 Language English Pages 244 File Format PDF
File Size 869.19 KB

The film From the Heart of the World - the Elder Brothers Warning
file: Elder Brothers Warning.avi
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The Kogi are an indigenous people living in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountains of northern Colombia, in South America.

They are the only civilisation to have survived the Spanish conquests and to have kept their individuality. They are perhaps the only indigenous people in the world who, because of the particular nature of their surroundings, have been able to keep themselves apart and sustain their culture inviolate. And not only that.
The one anthropologist who managed to study them in the 1940s and 50s concluded that though they are similar in some ways to the other Indian peoples around the Caribbean, northern Central America and south to the Andes, there are such profound differences thatin the end the Kogi stand alone.

They have survived to this day, keeping their traditions and relying upon, and looking after, the mountain environment. They believe it is their duty to look after the mountain which they call The Heart of the World. They call themselves the Elder Brother and refer to the new-comers as the Younger Brother, who they believe is destroying the balance of the world.

In 1990 the Kogi decided they must speak out to the rest of the world. They had survived by keeping themselves isolated but they decided that it was time to send a message to the Younger Brother. They could see that something was wrong with their mountain, with the heart of the world. The snows had stopped falling and the rivers were not so full. If their mountain was ill then the whole world was in trouble.
(A DVD of the full 90 minute BBC documentary is provided asa gift to donors who contribute at least 'a325 ('a328 from Eurozone, 'a330 from elsewhere) to the Tairona Trust - http://tairona.myzen.co.uk/index.php

It is undoubtedly Ereiras documentary which has enabled the Trust to engender the interest and support it has. Initially shown in 1990, it was subsequently presented at the Rio Summit in June 1992, has been given prime time in the USA on a number of occasions and been presented on other national TV networks in Europe and elsewhere. At 90 minutes long, an unusual length for any documentary, it was prepared with a lot of input and editorial control from the Mamas. There is a specially commissioned orchestral score on the soundtrack and it makes use of filmic techniques (elaborate fade-ins and superimpositions etc) that are not normally associated with such documentaries. Actors, including Donald Pleasance and Jack Shepperd, are used to give voice to Kogi speech and narration is by Alan Ereira. There are interviews with experts such as Martin von Hildebrand (then Director of Indian Affairs), Alvaro Soto (Director of Excavations for The Lost City, and Frankie Rey, the tomb-robber who first found the Lost City.

Scenes of Kogi life are entwined with scenes of contemporary Colombian life as a counterpoint. The film incorporates a history of the Spanish Conquest and footage of tomb-robbers at work is used as a metaphor for the continuing rapaciousness of western culture. The Kogi are allowed to portray themselves in interviews and set pieces. The hierarchical nature of their society is soon described, and much is made of the role of the Mamas and of their education. We are shown the Kogi at work - clearing paths, working an old Spanish sugar-press, working the loom, planting etc.. Other scenes inform us of the use and symbolism of the poporo and a female Mama explains how this lime is prepared.

Popular appreciation for the film was immediate and reviews from television critics were favourable, but it has caused controversy and debate amongst anthropologists. Typical criticism comes from Alan Campbell who criticises the film as an example of a cultural commodity where presentation comes before anything else. (Campbell, MacClancy and McDonagh 1996: 61-2). He contrasts it unfavourably with the thoughtful, careful, clever work (ibid) of Brian Mosers early Disappearing Worlds films and presents it as a product of the present political and cultural climate [in which] (f)rivolity, shallowness and profit rule the airwaves.(ibid).

This sort of criticism stems, I suggest, from the use of the filmic techniques mentioned above. Film experts, when analysing their craft, draw a distinction between feature film, which tends to concentrate on an emotional and normally fictional message, and documentary, which aims at an objectively truthful account of a real situation. To achieve this objectivity, documentary filmmakers tend to avoid the techniques of feature film for those of observational realismquote and minimalism. It is believed that if the director uses the techniques the audience associates with feature film, then the film is in danger of being associated with the emotional pull of such films, and consequently with fiction. By flouting this convention, Ereira tempts the objections of those committed to observational realism.

Ereira himself would defend the film on the grounds that the necessity of selectivity and the demand for a dramatic narrative force the producer towards an artificially simple and inevitably slanted presentation. In Beauchamp and Klaidmans judgment, The search for truth ... becomes a search for a preconceived moment'85 that captures the essence of truth in the mind of the documentary maker. (Gross, Katz, & Ruby 1988: vii-viii).

Donald Taylor, of the Pitt-Rivers Museum Oxford, reviewed it at the request of Dr. Marcus Banks. He recognizes and accepts that the methods used are not strictly in accord with what one would expect from a serious ethnographic film. Thus it is difficult for a reviewer to separate effect from content. (Tayler 1993: 219-220). However, he finds it remarkable that the film contains so many scenes of intimate social events, admits its seductive power (ibid:221) and praises Ereiras ability to synthesize the complex web of themes - archaeological, historical, mythological, ethnographic and ecological - in the brief space of ninety minutesquote . (ibid: 220).

In a reply to Tayler, Graham Townsley describes it as a film which dovetailed [the Mamas] desires to a remarkable degree (Townsley 1993: 225), and points to its polyvocality. Once they had overcome their considerable misgivings about the making of the film they were very clear: they would control the whole process as carefully as possible. They would show us what they wanted to show us and, in a sense, stage their own representation of themselves. (ibid: 224). He has his criticisms of the film On purely aesthetic grounds there are a few moments when I feel the film goes over the top. It is also, for instance, factually misleading if it suggests that the Kogi live in a sort of Lost World and that Alan and the film crew were the first ones to penetrate it. In fact, although by and large they keep themselves very much to themselves, the Kogi have had regular contact with Europeans and Colombians since the conquest, are now peripherally involved in local markets, herd cattle, grow coffee, etc., (ibid: 224) but the style of the film is peculiarly appropriate to its content and intention. (ibid: 223). He concludes that Ereira was by sensibility and training much better qualified to make their film than the conventional ethnographic filmmaker. (ibid: 226).

So much for the serious criticism of the film. At the other end of the scale, Michael Hirsch reviewed the video for Earth Matters (Issue 30) in 1996. He referred to the Kogi as patronising, Ereira as gullible and the message of the film as hokum . Correspondence ensued!

In 1992, Tairona Heritage Trust representatives visited Santa Marta and shot a 10 minute update called Return to the Kogi . It features footage of a village, Bonga, being built on land recently purchased with Tairona Heritage Trust funds, interviews with Amparo Jiminez and Gonavindua Tairona officials, and an interview with Ram Gil on the importance and method of correct reforestation.

References
Campbell, Alan. Tricky Tropes - Styles of the Popular and the Pompouse in MacClancy, Jeremy and McDonagh, Chris (eds). Popularizing Anthropology. Routledge. 1996.
Gross, Larry Katz J.S. & Ruby J. Image Ethics - the Moral Rights of Subjects in Photographs, Film, and Television. Oxford University Press. 1988.
Tayler, Donald. Film Review - From the Heart of the World in Visual Anthropology 6:219-221. Harwood Academic Publishers. 1993.
Townsley, Graham. Comment - Lost Worlds Found: Advocacy and Film Rhetoric in Visual Anthropology 6:223-226. Harwood Academic Publishers. 1993.

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