The defence of cultures, languages and territories is one of the hallmarks of indigenous communication and cinema, as affirmed by those of us who have been working from a multitude of contexts to assert our right to tell our stories and through them to relate to other peoples and struggles.
The capacity to construct other meanings of what our ancestors are, what we are and what we aspire to for our future generation, affirm that our proposals have a deep and broad responsibility, which has to do with spirituality, with diversity, with the way we see the world.
Indigenous cinema globally is at a point of no return, there is a wealth of experience achieved through diverse film genres, thanks to access to technical training that has allowed us to assemble and tell our stories. However, it is important to highlight that this training must go hand in hand with the spiritual meanings of writing with light, knowing the diversity of temporalities, protocols of the stories, in order to build a cinematographic language proposed by each people.
For this reason we created the Emerging Filmmakers Professional Development Programme, as a methodology that supports, through masterclasses given by award-winning personalities, group and personalised sessions to provide theoretical and practical narrative tools to storytellers, storytellers and indigenous collectives from tropical forests who work with grassroots organisations in their territories and who resist dispossession and the climate crisis.
With this dialogue of knowledge, we hope to continue honouring our ancestors by practising the gift of storytelling, rethinking and strengthening our own identity and our own forms of communication. We, the peoples who are in favour of a dignified life for all and the protection of biodiversity, say that we are present.
David Hernández Palmar | Wayuu IIPUANA