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In a constant process of cultural genocide, the indigenous cultures of Latin America began to disappear during La Conquista, and even continue disappearing during the modern era, the 20th and 21st centuries. The 20th century has been defined as the “century of cinema” since cinema was the art that developed and matured during this period, culminating in the last 20 years with the internet. Thanks to photography, later to film, and today also to the internet, these indigenous cultures have had the opportunity to stay registered (alive, recorded?) and, to a degree, to renew themselves and find new ways of existing within a world every day more globalized.

A fascinating example of this phenomenon is the film “Cuativerio Feliz” (1995) by Cristián Sánchez (èצӰ�� Tinker Visiting Professor, Spring 2008) based on the memories of Francisco Núñez de Pineda and Bascuñán (1673). When Sánchez produced this film he made it by talking with Mapuche Indians from his country, but to them, descendents from a time when the book narrated, taught him vocabulary and vocal intonations from the “Mapudungun” language that had been lost over the span of three centuries and that the linguists and anthropologists were able to recover towards the end of the 20th century.

It is clear that the indigenous cultures existing today have been losing the roots of their original language.

This conference will propose and discuss the following types of questions:

To what extent can cinema serve as an instrument to recover the memory and identity of the culture?
To what extent can cinema serve as an “image” for current indigenous and non-indigenous groups?
To what degree can cinema combat, delay, break the current uniformity of cultures and offer in exchange “cultural diversity” that is so necessary to understand one another?
To what extent can cinema, involving the indigenous subject, become the ONLY means of cultural restoration?

In the final two decades of the 20th century, as well as today, some film makers have managed to film indigenous cultures with remarkable cultural and aesthetic results. An exemplary film such as “Cabeza de Vaca” by Mexican film maker Nicolas Echevarría has proved to be not only one of the best films ever produced in Mexico, but also an attempt of audiovisual expression of the un-transferable experience of an indigenous “witch.” As in his fiction and anthropology books where writer Carlos Castañeda managed to express the ideological world of shaman, “Cabeza de Vaca” was able to express it with dramatic strength on the screen.

This project consists of reuniting the most notable film makers that managed to express the indigenous cultures of various Latin American countries in films of different objectives and aesthetics. There will be guests from Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Mexico, Ecuador, Puerto Rico and Bolivia.

List of speakers to follow.

Sponsored by The Center for Latin American Studies and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese.