Belem – In the heart of the Peruvian Amazon, poor indigenous communities forgot the hardships of everyday life to celebrate an international film festival featuring works from tropical forest countries.
Many of those attending the 10-day event had never seen a film on a big screen before, and the screen used at the festival itself was unique due to the region’s geography.
“The festival aims to be a tribute to the world’s jungles and the people who live there, as well as to indigenous communities. We believe that at a time when everyone is talking about climate change, the answers to the challenges and destruction that forests face can be found there,” said Daniel Martinez Quintanilla, co-executive director of the festival, which ends on Sunday.
Life in the Belém community revolves around water: homes and shops are built on stilts because of frequent floods that last for months after rains, and families have canoes for transportation, although children who don’t have their own sometimes use large plastic containers instead.
So members of the Muyuna Floating Film Festival (Muyuna, which means “whirlpools in a great river” in Quechua) set up a screen on a 10-meter (33-foot)-tall wooden structure so residents could watch films from their canoes or the windows of their homes.
“For the first time, we get to know the environment that brought us to this community,” said Jorge Chiricahua, a 60-year-old farmer from Belém who raises chickens and grows cassava, corn and vegetables to meet his family’s needs. He has never been to a cinema.
Many of Belém’s residents are from rural areas of the Peruvian Amazon and belong to different indigenous groups, including the Cucamá, Yagua and Bora, who migrated in search of better economic, educational and health opportunities.
People cut holes in the wooden floors of their homes to fish, forcing mothers to keep a close eye on their children, who don’t yet know how to swim, to make sure they don’t fall in and drown. Health officials report widespread malnutrition and diarrhea due to a lack of drinking water.
Martinez Quintanilla said the event included films from tropical forest countries such as Thailand, Brazil, Taiwan and Panama, as well as films made by young people in Peru.
The films screened included the Peruvian animated short “Engines and Melodies,” which tells the story of ants that cut down trees in the Amazon and cicadas that play an incredible whistle that helps regenerate the forest, but then a forest fire breaks out and everything changes.
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Briceño reported from Lima, Peru.
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