The Politics of Authorship in Latin American Indigenous Filmmaking

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Heightened coverage of indigeneity in recent Latin American film, prompted by the release of Birdwatchers (Marcho Bechis, 2008), La teta asustada (Claudia Llosa, 2009), El abrazo de la serpiente (Ciro Guerra, 2015) and Ixcanul (Jayro Bustamante, 2015), has afforded an exciting critical juncture in which scholars of Indigenous filmmaking are well placed to intervene. Analyses of these transnationally-produced and circulated works, for all their productive insights, have tended to eclipse the influence of Indigenous-authored productions in the region which, for multiple reasons, are not able to reach the same 'global' audiences. In building a productive interface between diverse disciplines and communities of practice, this fellowship seeks to challenge this position, illuminating the contemporaneity and global relevance of Indigenous filmmaking from Latin America, and analyzing the enmeshed and coalescing histories of recent Latin American and Indigenous film.The project builds on my existing work conducted with the Latin American Coordinating Council for Indigenous Film and Media (CLACPI), the foremost umbrella organization promoting Indigenous filmmaking in the region. By way of three collaborative outputs, in addition to a single-authored book, the research will model ethically-guided methods to the field in theory and praxis. The complex relationship between authorship and the languages of production, which characterize the diverse aesthetics of the films in addition to their funding and distribution prospects, forms a focal point for these joint activities. In current film programming circuits and teaching provision, the languages of Latin American cinema are considered to be overwhelmingly Spanish or Portuguese. Indeed, the relationship between these languages and the development of Latin American Film Studies has been key to the discipline's emergence on Modern Languages degree programmes. This sits uncomfortably, however, with the multilingual films produced by Indigenous directors in the region. Latin American Indigenous filmmaking thus compels scholars, audiences and funding bodies alike to rethink the linguistic and cultural diversity of the region in relation to aesthetics and authorship practices.Responding to this imperative, a Translation Forum will be staged during the CLACPI-organized FICMayab' Film Festival in 2018, gathering leading practitioners of audiovisual translation alongside Indigenous linguists in order to tackle this crucial issue. Decision-makers and public institutions who work in the design and delivery of policy and initiatives for filmmaking in the region will be targeted through the production of a Code of Good Practice focusing specifically on the issue of audiovisual translation for Indigenous films. These recommendations will also influence the production of a set of 5 newly-subtitled films into English, enabling them to qualify for a wider range of exhibition and funding opportunities, and which will be screened during the Mother Tongue Festival at the Smithsonian Institution at the end of the fellowship. A series of 4 Web Residencies pairing Indigenous filmmakers with scholars to produce 'virtual takeovers' of pages around a designated theme, will also extend awareness of Indigenous film practice and create generative exchanges between scholarship and directors in order that the public profile of the field be raised. The book will provide a comparatist approach to authorship in Latin American Indigenous filmmaking, offering detailed consideration of formal characteristics of the films, while remaining attuned to local contexts of production and circulation. Overall, the explicit engagement with authorship, language diversity and audiovisual translation throughout the Fellowship will influence perceptions of film's role in reflecting cultural heterogeneity and facilitate public and scholarly access to a more diverse ecology of film form.