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Ciro Guerra

Birds of Passage – Gleaning from Roundtable Interview

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I recently had the chance to take part in a roundtable interview with the directors of Birds of Passage, Cristina Gallego and Ciro Guerra. The film tells the story of a clan of indigenous people in Columbia who become involved with the drug trade, bringing ruin to their traditional values.

Q: You’re telling a story of indigenous people who have had their values compromised by outsiders. How do you gain the trust of those indigenous people to let you tell their story?

Cristina Gallego: We shot a film there in north Columbia twelve years ago, and we shot one week in that territory. Many people came and told us the story that happened many years ago. That history hasn’t been told and hasn’t been represented even by them. It seemed important for them in the Wayúu community and the way we treated them, they were open to tell us they history, about their community, their rules. And I think with our previous film, Embrace of the Serpent, which was set in the Amazonian community was a help.

For this film the particular process was we made the research and we wrote about the history based on the particulars that they are telling us. We wrote the script and it was corrected by an anthropologist from there. And something that happened also, you may see them very strange or closed, and they are closed but they are open also. And this particular Wayúu community is used to being closed, but they deal with people from the outside. So we came to tell a story that would be not just about them but with them. Thirty percent of the crew were Wayúu people—they worked in direction and in the acting. We were being respectful all the time. We were wanting to learn from them.

Q: Could you tell us a bit about the spiritual nature? I think their value system has a spiritual basis, which includes nature and various other things. How would define the Wayúu spirituality we get to see a glimpse of in the film?

Cristina Gallego: Before I arrived to work with them, I thought it might be similar, but it’s not similar. They are very different in the way that they work with the spiritual world. In the Wayúu society they have connection with the spiritual, but the spirituality is very grounded in the territory. They are one of the most traditional, but at the same time one of the most capitalistic societies.

Ciro Guerra: For them the main gods are the rain. They have a god for the wind. They have a god for the thunder, the fire. But for them, the women are the ones who are in contact with the spiritual world. In dreams they are visited by the spirits of their ancestors. So they have a strong relationship with the dead. And they come back and visit them in dreams, and they follow their advice to make decisions.

Q: Columbia is a Catholic country, the cemetery is filled with crosses, and many of the names are Christian names. What is the Catholic influence?

Ciro Guerra: There were missions—Capuchin missions a hundred years ago. In Columbia the Catholic Church was very connected to the state so in many places the only way they could get an actual identity was to have a Christian name which was given by the Catholic Church in the baptism records. There’s some influence of that. They take some elements, but mostly they follow their traditions.

Birds keep coming back during the film and are some of the messengers. Could you talk about how much those birds meant? It was often what they looked for—what bird are they going to see at this point, which ties into the title, of course.

Cristine Gallego: Their relation with the birds is a connection not only with the Catholic world but with other myths and other cultures that used it. The birds are like the Holy Spirit, and like the Egyptian god Horus, and the relation with the messenger is important. The representation of the animals in early period are the eagle and the condor. This relation with the messenger brings information from the other world of things that are going to happen. This is the basis of the mythology for the Wayúu.

 

TIFF ’18: Birds of Passage

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Birds of Passage tells the story of the origins of the Colombian drug trade in ways that have not been explored before. Seen through eyes of an indigenous Wayuu family that becomes involved in the growing industry of selling drugs to American youth, Passage speaks of a world of honor, power and greed. However, as the drug trade increases, war breaks out between families in a way that threatens their lives and cultural traditions.

With the popularity of Narcos and Loving Pablo, there appears to be a great deal of interest in the rise of the Columbian drug trade in recent years. Thankfully though, Passage breathes new life into the genre. Directed by Cristina Gallego and her husband Ciro Guerra, Passage discusses the very origins of the drug trade from the perspective of the Wayuu tribe in a way that emphasizes the impact it had on the families and traditions of the region. Despite the fact that they live in an area rich with opportunity and resources, the Wayuu do not benefit from the big businesses of the outsiders (or alijuna). As tensions mount between them, the Wayuu—lead by cocky young Raphayet (Jose Acosta)—become increasingly disinterested in following the rules imposed upon them and they begin to look for other sources of income. (Incidentally, you will never look at the Peace Corps the same way again.)

What’s more, while the film features strong performances from the men in the film, it’s the women that truly stand out in this piece. Whereas most films about the Columbian drug trade often puts the emphasis on masculine dominance, Passage allows the women to roar with a ferocity that brings balance to the storytelling. Strong characters such as Pushaina (Carmina Martinez) and Zaida (Natalia Reyes) speak to the power of the female voice in the family in a way that also challenges stereotypes established in other entries into the genre.

Told in five chapters that span from the 1960s-80s,Passagespeaks to the tensions between keeping traditions in the midst of progress. By telling the story through the lens of the Wayuu, Gallego and Guerra utilize the drug trade as a window to explore its impact on the indigenous community and their way of life. By demonstrating the damage and tensions created amongst the Wayuu way of life, Passage manages to focus the conversation around the drug trade in a more intimate manner. The danger here is more than the threat upon their lives. Instead, the greatest threat is to their community and way of life. As the family becomes increasingly caught up within the power and madness associated with the drug trade, the conflict that erupts is often internal. As the momentum builds, Raphayet and his family find themselves caught between what is necessary to maintain their power and who they are. While the term ‘bird of passage’ refers to those who move freely from place to place (more specifically, as drug runners), the film also demonstrates the desire to hold onto the more static identity of tradition.

With strong performances and a smart script, Bird of Passage provides a refreshing spin on a familiar genre. Directors Gallego and Guerra create a lush environment with an intimate story of the challenge of maintaining one’s cultural heritage.

Birds of Passage is currently playing at the Toronto International Film Festival

To hear full audio of our interview with director Cristina Gallego, click here.

Embrace of the Serpent – Clash of Realities

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Oscar-nominated (Best Foreign Language Film) Embrace of the Serpent is an artful exploration of the spirituality of natural religion. It is the story of Karamakata, a shaman, and two journeys he undertakes many years apart with European ethnologists. The story is inspired by the journals of two such scientists, Theodor Koch-Grunberg and Richard Evans Schultes, who traveled through the Amazon in the last century. Because director Ciro Guerra wanted to make a film about colonialism from the perspective of native peoples, it veers away from the Western way of storytelling. It is still essentially a linear narrative, but it also manages to conflate the two stories from years apart into parallel accounts.

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The first story shows us Karamakata as a young man. Theo, a German scientist, is brought to Karamakata for healing. He has contracted one of the tropical diseases, but it can only be cured by the rare (perhaps mythical) plant Yakruna. Karamakata, the last of his people, knows where the plant can be found and sets off in search of the healing flower. Years later, Evan, an American ethnologist, finds a now old Karamakata in search of knowledge about the fate of Theo, who was never heard from again after the earlier trip. Again Karamakata sets off—across the same route—with another Westerner in tow. The visits with some of the same tribes or outposts show us the corruption the Western ideas have brought to the area.

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Because the film is such a visual experience and less a strict narrative, it has a bit of a poetic feel to it. This is enhanced by the use of black and white cinematography which takes the film out of the realm of “reality”. (At first I was a bit disappointed that I was missing the vibrant colors of the rainforest, but soon I began to appreciate the way the photography enhance the mystical feel of the film.) The conflict between the Western scientific understanding of reality and the native natural view of reality is a central part of this film. Theo, and later Evan, hold on to their Western ideas, but they must rely on Kanamakata for their survival. Karamakata’s approach to the world around him is very different from the way the European travelers see the world. Whose understanding is correct? Or is the very concept of “reality” something that can vary?

This conflict about reality is essentially a spiritual and metaphysical question. Even within Western thought there often arise conflicts between science and religion—even between different scientific views and different religious views. This journey through Amazonia and across time takes a much more spiritual perspective than it does a scientific view. Karamakata’s natural religious understanding of the world may seem very strange to those of us with a Western mindset, but then it could well be just as legitimate an understanding—and is one that is shared by many people throughout the world. Is there something more spiritual about such a non-scientific worldview? How do you align the spiritual ways of seeing reality with the scientific view that is so engrained in our Western thought?

Photos by Andres Cordoba, courtesy of Oscilloscope Laboratories