Latin America by others From a distance and close-up

The Rio Film Festival is actually the perfect melting pot in which to find singular and significant examples of the current trends in cinematic portraits of Latin America, from a distance and close-up. Bolivians seen through a Japanese lense. Peruvians explored by Belgians. Brazilians celebrated by the British. Panamians re-visited by North Americans. The interest comes from all directions, and in many cases, with the best of the intentions – though of course, these can still be problematic.

Take Toshifumi Matsushita’s Pachamama. The film impresses with its naive appreciation of the Quechua, an indigenous people of Bolivia. They are shown working their land tenaciously (‘‘Mother Earth’’ is the literal translation of the film’s title), little children are singing and playing handmade instruments, drinking corn-made Chicha and eating fresh honeycomb, in complete equilibrium with nature. Whilst this is all probably similar to what a native Bolivian’s life must be like, the way the film presents it deviates very little from the stereotype unfairly projected to Japanese tourists. The Belgian- German coproduction Altiplano beautifully displays the Peruvian andean mountains - and not the Bolivian region the title mistakenly refers to - without worrying much about its overstylized and euro-centric usage of local imagery.

There are other approaches to Latin American realities, and one in particular is closer to an omnipresent contribution from the western culture to the rest of the planet: the search for success. It is success that Irlan Santos has been fighting for his entire life, as Beadie Finzi clearly states in her first documentary feature, Only When I Dance. Leaving the favela and winning his dream life in Laussane or New York is the way out for Irlan, a poor, black (and therefore “unlikely”) ballet dancer. His story - the exception to the rule in Rio’s Favelas - makes the perfect material for a warm documentary, but it doesn’t assure a remarkable film as a result.

Guilt can be a powerful engine as well, driving people to document realities from territories abroad which, in the past, their fellow countrymen helped to either conquer, invade or exploit, militarily or economically. Take for instance the Panama Canal: once property of Colombia, later owned by the then newly-born Central American country, whose independence was backed by not other that the U.S. Navy. American photographer John Urbano visited this area in Lo bello de la pelea, a good item for a TVspecial reportage rather than a documentary film.

One wonders what would be locals’ reaction if some European filmmaker dared to observe their people not with naivety and kindness, but with a more harsh and crude approach - without recurring to stylistic resources to beautify it.

‘‘Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder’’. So does prejudice and chauvinism, guilt and paternalism. We can neither forget where we come from, nor where foreigners are from. Our reality is our own, and yet, at the same time, for everyone who wants to honestly embrace it as theirs.

Laslo Rojas