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part of
double bill #15
Yarokamena
Berlinale Forum Expanded
2022
In an unknown place, futuristic ruins overlap with the story of an indigenous saga. In 20th-century Colombia, resistance fighter Yarokamena, a member of the indigenous Uitoto tribe, called for rebellion against violent exploitation of the rubber mining industry in the Amazone and invoked the spiritual powers of war.
Bio Andrés Jurado
Andrés Jurado is a Colombian artist, filmmaker, and producer whose work explores the intersections between experimental and expanded cinema, archives, counter archive, contemporary art, propaganda, mosquitoes, aliens, the space race, and the incidences of those in the construction of contemporary narratives and politics. His works, including Yarokamena, have been presented at festivals worldwide. He is co-founder and co-director of the Laboratory of Experimental Cinema and Expanded Theater La Vulcanizadora. In 2021, he was part of the Forensic Architecture Team in the investigation into land dispossession, disappearance, and deforestation in Colombia.
A mythical figure is summoned to the screen in blood-coloured light. Yarokamena, a hero of the indigenous resistance at the beginning of 20th century Colombia, pushes this disquieting tale that weaves past, present and future and reminds us of the violent legacy of extractivism and colonialism whose brutal echoes cannot be silenced to this day. In the words of the film, “The jungle shudders, the trees are the ones who know what happened, but since they’re not humans, they don’t speak, so all the memories are collected there.” Yarokamena is a timely piece, a strong manifesto that shines a light on a dark history to prove once more that environmental justice is and should be an anti-colonial struggle.
As stated by Gerardo Sueche, councilor of the Uitoto people, the film remarkably attempts to return the voice to the people who were wronged generation upon generation—softly at first, resorting to fragments of oral history that were long silenced by authority figures, until it finally becomes deafening, a sheer destructive force that resonates loudly in the form of a raging black metal sound. A portal has been opened, and the ghosts of the past are now floating above a graveyard of dysfunctional antennas that punctuate the landscape of the Amazon shown in the first part of the film; technological ruins of the future that serve as a reminder that the cycle of exploitation has yet to be broken.
Credits
Cast
Gerardo Sueche Cañube
Camera
Editor
Sound
Andrés Jurado, Julian Galay, Maria Alejandra Rojas Arias
Music
Jitoma Safiama
Producer
Ansgar Schaefer, Maria Alejandra Rojas Arias
Production
La Vulcanizadora