Grupo Ukamau
This is a film collective based in Bolivia and
unfortunately their work is very difficult to see in the UK. It was formed in
1968 and included Jorge Sanjinés, director: Osca Soria, scriptwriter: Antonio
Eguino, cinematographer: and Ricardo Rada, producer. Bolivia is a land-locked country in the
central Andes, named after the great Liberator Simon Bolivar. The population is
divided between Quechua and Aymara Indians, mestizos [of mixed European and
Indian descent] and a small elite of European descent. Soon after the Spanish
conquest silver was discovered. Mining became and has remained the most
important economic activity, though natural gas has joined this in recent
decades. As is the case elsewhere in Latin America the modern period has
alternated between military coups [apparently 189 by 1980] and ‘democratic’
government,
The Grupo Ukamau took their name from a film made for the
Bolivian Film Institute. It dramatised the exploitation of the indigenous
Aymara Indians through the tale of revenge by an Indian on a mestizo [a petit
bourgeois] who raped his wife. The final confrontation takes place on the
Altiplano, the high Andean plateau. Whilst this involves just the two men
[shades of Greed, 1923] it quite clearly involves class and ethnic conflicts.
It was certainly seen as critical by the then military government who dismissed
the group members who then developed independent film production.
In 1969 the group made what is probably their most famous
film, Blood of the Condor (Yalwar Mallku). Filmed in black and white it
recounted actual events when members of the US ‘Progress Corps’ [‘gringos’,
also known as the Peace Corp] were secretly sterilising Quechua women under the
guise of medical aid. The film was initially banned but aroused great interest
and in 1971 the Peace Corp was expelled from Bolivia. The film also attracted
international attention and was seen as part of the New Latin American Cinema
emerging across the continent. Whilst the film was made with the help of the
Indian villagers who appear in the film, its form is recognisably similar to
western art films. There is a complex use of flashbacks and overall the film
fits into the melodrama of protest mould. One obvious influence is Soviet
Montage, and the final freeze frame of the film with upraised rifles appears to
homage October 1927. Both this film, Ukamau and later films make use of the
quena or Indian wooden flutes.
The Grupo members became critical of their own approach
and the form of their next major feature, Courage of the People (El coraje del
pueblo, 1971), was different. The film dramatised the massacre of striking
miners in 1967. Witnesses to these events provided the substance of the film
and appeared in it. The Grupo members took care to discuss both the form and
content of the film with this community as it was made. Noticeably the film
eschews the use of flashbacks [which some Indians found confusing] and of
close-ups, tending to the long take. The witnesses provide multiple narration
of the events: and the form of the film is elliptical and still complex. The
focus shifts from the individual protagonist familiar in dominant cinema to
‘the solidarity of the group’.
Two more films were then made in Bolivia and in
colour.Banners of the Dawn(Banderas del amanecer, Bolivia 1983) is a
documentary tracing democratic struggles against dictatorship between 1978 and
1983. And there is what appears to be the last film by Ukamau to get a
substantial release in Europe, The Clandestine Nation (La nación clandestina,
Bolivia 1989 with funding from the UK/C4, Spain, Germany and Japan). The film
recounts the journey, physical and mental, of an Indian representative who is
corrupted by dealings with a US food programme. His journey is one of
repentance and expiation, but it is also an exploration of the community values
and rituals. Sanjinés, and his cinematographer César Pérez, adhere to the
practice of long takes or sequence shots, emphasising the community and the
landscape in which it lives. The film does return to the use of flashbacks, but
these are integrated into the contemporary as the camera ‘pans’ rather than
cuts from past to present. This is effectively a type of complex montage
similar to that seen at work in Ivan the Terrible Part 2 (1946).
Ukamau have made further films since then [Para recibir
el canto de los pájaros (1995), released in Bolivia and Germany; Los hijos del
último jardín (2004), released in Bolivia and Japan] but they do not appear to
have circulated Europe. The most recent film Insurgents (2012) has only enjoyed
releases in Bolivia, Argentina and Mexico.
Apart from the film work Sanjinés and the Ukamau Group
have produced agitational and theoretical material. The major work is a set of
Manifestos, ‘Theory & Practice Of A Cinema With the People’. The carefully worded title is important. One
of the developing emphases in Ukamau’s work is giving cinematic voice to the
subjects, transforming them from the objects of dominant cinema. In Problems of
Form and Content in Revolutionary Cinema:
A film about the people made by an author is not the same
as a film made by the people through an author. As the interpreter and
translator of the people, such an author becomes their vehicle. When the
relations of creation change, so does content and, in a parallel process,
form.“
The point is illustrated by comparisons drawn between
Blood of the Condor and The Principal Enemy.
When we filmed Blood of the Condor with the peasants of
the remote Kaata community, we certainly intended that the film should be a
political contribu¬tion, denouncing the gringos and presenting a picture of
Bolivian social reality. But our fundamental objective was to explore our own
aptitudes. We cannot deny this, lust as we cannot deny that our relations with
the peasant actors were at that time still vertical. We still chose shots
according to our own personal taste, without taking into account their
communicability or cultural overtones. The script had to be learned by heart
and repeated exactly. In certain scenes we put the emphasis entirely on sound,
without paying attention to the needs of the spectators, for whom we claimed we
were making the film. They needed images, and complained later when the film
was shown to them. …
During the filming of Courage of the People, many scenes
were worked out on the actual sites of the historical events we were
reconstructing, through discussion with those who had taken part in them and
who had a good deal more right than us to decide how things should be done.
Furthermore, these protagon¬ists interpreted the events with a force and
conviction which professional actors would have found difficult.
Thesecompañeros not only wanted to convey their experiences with the same
intensity with which they had lived them, but also fully understood the
political objectives of the film, which made their participation in it an act
of militancy. They were perfectly clear about the usefulness of the film as a means
of declaring throughout the country the truth of what had hap¬pened. So they
decided to make use of it as they would a weapon. We, the members of the crew,
became instruments of the people’s struggle, as they expressed themselves
through us!
This is notable both in the visual and aural style of the
film.
Our decision to use long single shots in our recent films
was determined by the content itself. We had to film in such a way as to
produce involvement and participation by the spectator. It would have been no
use in The Principal Enemy, for example, to have jumped sharply into close-ups
of the murderer as he is being tried by the people in the square, because the
surprise which the sudden introduction of a close-up always causes would have
undercut the development of the sequence as a whole, whose power comes from
within the fact of collective participation in the trial and the participation
by the audience of the film which that evokes. The camera movements do no more
than mediate the point of view and dramatic needs of the spectator, so that
s/he may become a participant. Sometimes the single shot itself includes
close-ups, but these never get closer to the subject than would be possible in
reality. Sometimes the field of vision is widened between people and heads so
that by getting closer we can see and hear the prosecutor. But to have intercut
a tight close-up would have been brutally to interpose the director’s point of
view, imposing mean¬ings which should arise from the events themselves. But a
close-up which is arrived at from amongst the other people present, as it were,
and together with them, carries a different meaning and expresses an attitude
more consistent with what is taking place within the frame, and within the
substance of the film itself.
Distribution and exhibition were equally seen as
essential aspects of film work.
In Bolivia, before the appalling eruption of fascism
there, the Ukamau Group’s films were being given intensive distribution. Blood
of the Condorwas seen by nearly 250,000 people! We were not content to leave
this distribution solely to the conventional commercial circuits, and took the
film to the countryside together with projection equipment and a generator to
allow the film to be shown in villages where there is no electricity.
The article also refers to similar practices by other
groups of filmmakers in Argentina, Chile [before the coup], and Ecuador. The
Manifesto clearly falls within the wider ambit of the New Latin American Cinema
that arose in the 1960s. One can see crossovers between this statement and
analysis and other works like ‘Towards a Third Cinema’ and ‘For an Imperfect
Cinema’.
The prime focus of Ukamau is the Andean Indian
communities who are the subjects of their films. But their work also offers an
important example for other filmmakers. I went back and revisited their work
after critically viewing two Palestinian films.
Five Broken Cameras is a record of a village under
occupation by Israel as it constructs the ‘separation wall’. The filmmaker and
major protagonist in the film, Emad Burnat, was assisted in producing the film
by Israeli filmmaker Guy Davidi. What emerges is the voice of this Palestinian
farmer: given voice in part through the cinematic skills of the Israeli
filmmaker. The film’s power resides mainly presenting this voice and this
experience. The major weakness in the film is a lack of an analytical overview:
something that I have noted in a number of documentaries set in Palestine. The
work of Ukamau offers an example of both giving voice but also drawing out the
actual overall social relations at work.
The second film is Apples of Golan. This is a documentary
made by two Irish filmmakers in an area occupied by Israel along the Golan
Heights, bordering Syria. This film is also very effective but a major weakness
is a rather confused presentation of the politics of the people. Whilst the
local population oppose the Israeli occupation there is also a strong sense of
support for President Assad in Syria, who is seen as a protector. The filmmakers
obviously found this a problematic aspect. And the film does not really present
a clear sense of the community’s take on this. In fact, in a Q&A, it
transpired that the editing took place in Dublin and that the ‘form of the
film’ emerged in this process. This is the opposite of the methodology
developed by Ukamau and would seem to explain the lack of clarity.
Theory & Practice appeared in Spanish in Siglo XXI
Editores in 1979. A translation into English by Richard Schaaf was published in
the USA by Curbstone Press in 1989. In 1983 a translation by Malcom Coad of
Problems of Form and Content appeared in a BFI Publication for Channel 4,
Twenty-five Years of the New Latin American Cinema, edited by Michael Chanan.
This is a documentary filmed in the occupied Golan
Heights between September 2007 and July 2012. It was filmed, directed and
edited by Keith Walsh and Jill Beardsworth, with Keith on camera and Jill on
sound. The film is centred in the village of Majdal Shams, which is a Druze
village which before 1967 was part of Syria. Israel invaded the territory and
has occupied it ever since. The Druze are found across the area in Palestine
and in what is now Lebanon. In 1982, in defiance of international law, Israel
annexed the territory. Most of the residents have refused Israeli citizenship
and their ID cards bear the code, ‘undefined’. The film shows us the place and
the inhabitants. One of its strengths is the variety of voices it offers. We
see and hear men, women, old and young, committed nationalists and members more
divided over their situation. We also see ex-prisoners from the resistance to
occupation. We do see one member of a Zionist settlement – revealingly an
Argentinean immigrant. The film suggests a generation gap on the issue of Syria
as a ‘homeland’. But at the same time there seems to be a fairly solid
consensus of opposition to Israeli occupation.
The film is both thoughtful and complex. The editing in
particular cuts between different viewpoints and different times in the
filming. This suggests some of the ambiguities that the filmmaker identified.
It is also a film that uses a rich mise en scène and sound design to add
comment. Thus at two points we hear a local piece of hip-hop. A recurring shot
of mist floating over the town and the heights is also extremely suggestive.
The apples are the most compelling symbol, one for the Druze that is also
economic. One local refers to the ‘roots’ of the apples trees and of the local
inhabitants.
After a screening co-director Keith Walsh in a Q&A
talked about the filming and answered questions from the audience. Jill and
Keith first heard of the situation in 2006 from a colleague in Galway. After
raising funds they commenced their project in 2007. Over the five years they
visited the area eight or nine times. At first they got the feel of the place,
talked to ‘official’ voices and developed a sense of confidence with the
community. Interestingly, apart from two occasions shown in the film, they had
few problems with the Israeli authorities or the military. Surprisingly the
Golan Heights are popular tourist attraction in the area.
They recorded some two hundred hours and film and sound.
Keith explained that the editing emerged out of the footage. When he or Jill
had different proposals they ‘parked’ the issue. Usually when they returned
later the best course was clear. He also noted that the style changed to a
degree over the filming period. There are signs of this but the film uses a
complex time order which is very effective in suggesting ambiguities but also in
developing the impact of the experiences of the village.
The film was launched in Dublin in late 2012. Keith
commented that interest took a sudden increase when the USA was considering
‘bombing Syria’. Since then it has won the Jury Prise at the Baghdad Film
Festivals.
The people suffering under the Israeli occupation have
enjoyed some excellent film attention in recent years. This documentary is
another strong account of a particular people who usually enjoy limited
attention. One weakness would be that the underlying historical and political
relations are rather taken for granted. And pragmatically I had to look up the
village on the Internet to get a clear sense of the topography, which is
important in the film But the film brings
a complexity to its treatment of the situation, which is rare in documentaries.
The other major weakness is in the presentation of the
indigenous communities. One senses that there are divisions with reference to
the situation in Syria, where a civil war wages. This also seems to affect the stance
that is taken against the Israeli occupation. My feeling was that the film
needed a debate between the different groupings, whereas what see and hear is
the variety of opinions presented by the filmmakers. The final form of the film
was clearly determined by the filmmakers after the actual filming, miles away
in Dublin. So there is not a sense of ‘authorship’ by the indigenous
communities. This is an outsider view, though it is sympathetic and attempts to
be empathetic.
It is interesting to compare this film with another
documentary set among peoples occupied by Israel – Five Broken Cameras. In that
film the record and the standpoint are provided by the Palestinian farmer cum
filmmaker. This not only provides a greater sense of immediacy but also offers
the indigenous people’s attitude to the struggle, including the differences
that are found within it.
I saw the film at the Hyde Park Picture House, together
with the Q&A, as part of the Leeds International Film Festival.
This is the latest feature directed by Hany Abu-Assad: he
also produced and scripted the film. His earlier feature Paradise Now (2005)
concerned suicide bombers against Israel. In this film a young Palestinian
involved in resistance is imprisoned by the Israeli’s who set him up to be an
informant. One can see thematic parallels between the two films which depict
the brutal occupation by the Zionist regime bur which also explore the
political and personal problematic of Palestinians involved in their struggle
for freedom. This new film is well produced and the story holds one’s
attention. It also depicts the violence and repression suffered by Palestinians
under occupation. Hany Abu-Assad, who has made several features and shorts,
would seem to be a key figure in the construction of a Palestinian National
Cinema. That he has chosen to work within the severe restrictions of the
occupied Palestinian Territories is expressive of his stance.
My sense was that this new feature is the more
conventional film. The Palestinian relationships revolve around a triangle of
Omar (Adam Bakri), Nadia (Leem Lubany) and Tarek (Eyad Hourant). These are
convincing, as is the key Israeli security character Rami (Waleed F. Zuaiter).
Zuaiter). And the film makes good use of the topography of the occupied territories
[using Nazareth and Nablus as locations) and in particular the separation [or
‘isolation’] walls constructed by the Israeli’s. And the operations, both of the resistance
group and of Israeli security are convincing. However, the plotting of the personal
relationships becomes more conventional as the film progresses and this
conventionality shades over into the film’s resolution, especially in the final
shot.
One matter that caught my attention was the oddities
around the attribution of origin. The National Media Museum listed the
Palestinian territories and this designation is also used by the Hebden Bridge
Picture House [who screen the film on the 29th and 30th of July]. However Sight
& Sound lists‘Israel [Palestine] / United Arab Emirates’. The Press Notes
from the distributor Soda do not give a country of origin? In fact the film was
nominated by the Palestinian Authority for the 2014 Academy Award for Best
Foreign Language Film and accepted by the Academy on that basis. Given the
Hollywood’s history of pro-Zionist films this is a welcome change of heart, and
bizarrely the Academy appears more liberal than the British Film Institute. The
status of Palestinian lands has been a crucial battle in the media and the
wider culture. As far as the imperialist
[known euphemistically as the International Community] are concerned
they have supported the illegal designation of the lands as Israel. It creeps
into cinematic offerings: so The Battle of Britain (UK 1969) before the end
credits lists the various groups who were among ‘the few’. And this list
includes two whose origin is given as ‘Israel’! That is before the settler
regime and its state had even been constituted. It is a sign of the growing
support for the Palestinian struggle that there are breaches in this linguistic
wall.
It is worth noting that among the other films in that
category for 2014 was a feature nominated by Israel, Bethlehem (2013). This
film also details the relationship between an Israeli security officer and a
Palestinian informant. This is clearly an important aspect of the current
struggle.
I actually saw the film at the Vue cinema in Leeds Light.
Since this chain no longer produce printer programmes I am not sure if they
gave a derivation or what it might have been. However, a couple of other points
need to be noted. Omar ends with a several close-ups and then a cut to a black
screen. At this point at the Vue the auditorium lights came back up – not
gradually on a slider but abruptly. I did have a word with the manager
afterwards and pointed out how insensitive this was for any feature, but
especially one as important as Omar. The other point I noted was the DCP was
sourced from a version with ‘edited credits’, which also seemed a little odd.
This is essentially a Palestinian film made with the
assistance of an Israeli filmmaker and funded by companies in nine different
countries, developed through a European media project. It fits well into the
concept of ‘Imperfect Cinema’. The film is constructed from the footage that
the main protagonist, Emad Burnat, recorded on a series of domestic video
cameras. Burnat lives in the Palestinian village of Bill’in. The village is
over looked by the Zionist settlement of Modi’in Ilit and was a target of the
so-called security wall which is encroaching and stealing Palestinian lands in
the occupied territories. The film is similar in topic to the 2009 Budrus,
another Palestinian village threatened by the wall. In fact, both were able to
achieve some re-routing of this monstrosity. However, whilstBudrus tended to
celebrate this as an unconditional victory, Five Broken Cameras is much clearer
about the limitations of what was achieved.
Burnat has bought six cameras: the first five were
smashed in confrontations with Israeli security forces and Israeli settlers. We
get a very personal view of five years [2005 to 201] of protest and conflict as
the Palestinians defend their lands, their rights and their livelihoods.
Burnat’s film focuses on his experiences and that of his fellow Palestinians.
These include his family and his two friends: Adeeb and Bassem. Both the later
are active in the protests, which are supported by fellow Palestinians,
international volunteers and the small minority of Israeli’s who oppose the
state’s neo-colonial occupation.
What the film offers little of is the wider context:
among Palestinian forces, of the larger Zionist project of Israel, or of the
international aspects including the media. Such subjective limitations restrict
any analytical discussion of the situation but it does present a powerful and
emotive presentation of the conflict. We see repeated violence by the Israeli
military, and also by Israeli settlers. Emad is arrested and jailed: Adeeb is
shot in the leg and Bassem is killed by a gas grenade. And there are other Palestinian
fatalities including children. This is emotive material, but only part of a
much larger picture of a brutal occupation and expropriation.
The film has won wide praise and a nomination for an
Academy Award for Best Documentary at the 2013 Hollywood event. There has also
been some interesting criticism: one can discount the ‘gnashing of teeth’ by
Zionist supporters. On The Case for Global Film Roy Stafford expresses the
following reservations:
“What is slightly sinister is the film’s depiction of the
settlers – Orthodox Jews who are perhaps the least ‘humanised’ by the camera’s
gaze. The Israeli settlers seen here trouble me deeply – I can’t think of
anything about them that would attract my sympathy – but I don’t want to feel
that way about anybody and I wonder if the filmmakers’ decision not to invite
them to speak or not to attempt to present their perspective, somehow damages
the strength of the film’s polemic. I’m not asking for ‘balance’ – the settlers
are in the wrong, that’s the starting point. But we’ve got to try to treat them
like human beings, otherwise they are trapped behind their fences in the same
way that they have deliberately put the Palestinians behind a fence/wall.”
In part Roy appears to be arguing that Israelis,
including settlers, should be given a voice in the film. This is a valid point
in many cases: I have argued that a serious problem with Israeli films like
Waltz with Bashir (2008) or Western films like One Day in September (1999) is
that the Palestinians are mute victims in the films. However, I would argue
that this is not a universal requirement. In Waltz with Bashir the lack of a
‘voice’ for the Palestinian s and Lebanese is part of the films refusal to
confront the actual social actions taking place: the invasion which is not only
illegal under the laws of bourgeois states but which is a blatant suppression
of what are generally accepted as basic human rights. This is part of a general
conventional approach in Israeli films and the mainstream films from Hollywood,
which support Zionism.
It seems to me that Five Broken Cameras is a different
case and needs to be judged somewhat differently. The film follows an artistic
form which has resonated powerfully fore centuries: most notably in Goya’s
great and famous painting: The Third of May 1808. These are agitational
artworks which dramatise both the oppression and the resistance of a people.
Emad’s narrative is presented as a ‘representative story’ for Palestinian
resistance. Hence there is a clear awareness [absent in Budrus] of the need for
the struggle to continue.
It is worth pointing out that the Israelis in Five Broken
Cameras do have a voice, both the military and the settlers. They appear
frequently on camera barking out orders, threats and insults. Their voice is as
revealing of their standpoint as are their actions. And the ‘voice ‘ they
present in this film is typical of the actions of the larger Israeli State.
Juan García Espinosa writes:
“Should we ask for a cinema of denunciation? Yes and
no. … Yes, if the denunciation acts as
information, testimony, as another combat weapon for those engaged in the
struggle.”
My differences with Roy Stafford also turn in part on the
language one uses. Rather than ‘less than human’ I would use ‘inhuman’. That
is, ‘brutal, unfeeling, barbarous’. In fact, such actions treat the recipients
as ‘less than human’.
One of the most positive aspects of this film is the
extent to which Emad Burnat, as an ordinary working farmer, has been enabled to
develop a cinematic voice.
“There is a widespread tendency in modern art to make the
spectator participate even more fully. If he participates to a greater and
greater degree, where will the process end up? Isn’t the logical outcome – or
shouldn’t it in fact be – that he will cease being a spectator altogether?”
My more serious concern with the film’s lacunae is the
absence of a larger contextual aspect. The policies of the Israeli State are
absent: and more importantly, the complicated nature of the Palestinian forces
and resistance is not presented.
“We maintain that imperfect cinema must above all show
the process which generates the problems. …To show the process of a problem …
is to submit to judgement whiteout pronouncing the verdict.” And, in fact, Five
Broken Cameras ends with the historical verdict remaining open. But its
powerful presentation of Palestinian struggle makes it a very effective
agitational work. The film is definitely a key expression in the increasing
catalogue of Palestinian film.
Source: filmsite.org
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