Unfolding Indigenous Archives of the Colombian Amazon
- Juan Castrillon
- Department of Music, School of Arts & Sciences
Juan Castrillón sound recording a Tukanoan choir of shamans in Vaupés, Colombia. Photo by Abigail Vallejo.
“Unfolding Indigenous Archives of the Colombian Amazon” features two medium-length films – Kiraiñia (Long Flutes) Pami Kirami (Longhouse) – that call for changes in how ethnographic filmmaking has been performed and envisioned during the last five decades in the Northwest Amazon. Kiraiñia is an essay film about the process of remaking instruments and affect in an Amazonian community. The film breaks the factual perspective of ethnomusicological films by opening a cinematic dialogue informed by Emi-Hehenewa nonlinear linking and storytelling. It repairs the multilingual and perspectival exchange between indigenous and non-indigenous audiences as part of an ethical commitment to co-produce new media affordances for worldbuilding. Pami Kirami is a film that shows the process of building a longhouse in an Amazonian village after four decades of its absence. Longhouses are the proper venue for musical and ritual performance for indigenous communities in the Amazon. The film presents the community efforts for rebuilding the longhouse, and the expectations of a non-indigenous person on the emergent meanings of this ceremonial place. “Unfolding Indigenous Archives of the Colombian Amazon” will serve as the arts component of Juan Castrillon’s doctoral dissertation in Music Studies.