“Water has a soul. Water should be treated like a living being.”
The documentary film "Naboba - Madre del Agua" (2016, 54 min) by Amado Villafaña Chaparro invites on a circular journey starting in the coastal lagoon Ciénaga Grande, all the way up to the snow-capped peaks of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta (SNSM), and back to the sea, in northern Colombia. While traveling and talking to different members of the Arhuaco communities, the Mamos (spiritual authorities) share their ancestral perspective on water. Water itself becomes a protagonist of this audio-visual experience which takes the audience far away from western perspectives and conceptions of territory. Water is under threat and urgent action is needed to preserve and protect it. According to the indigenous mindset, this anchors in a relational transformation.
Amado Villafaña Chaparro is an Arhuaco director of photography, documentary filmmaker and photographer of the Arhuaco from the SNSM in Colombia. For over 20 years, his audiovisual projects have been transmitting the message of the indigenous peoples of the SNSM. He was the director of the communications collective Zhigoneshi of the Organización Gonawindúa Tayrona from 2002 to 2012, where he directed "Resistance on the Black Line" (2011). He is the founder and director of the Yosokwi Collective (since 2012). Currently he is working on his new film "The Black Line: Ancestral Territory of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta" for National Geographic.
The Arhuaco, together with the Kággaba (known as Kogui/Kogi), Wiwa and Kankuamo, are the four indigenous peoples of the SNSM, whose ancestral system of knowledge was inscribed in 2022 on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO, which Amado Villafaña Chaparro also made a short documentary about.
This public event is part of the activities organized within the framework of the IfCAR-project Liquid Stays: Artist Research Group on Water and Time.
organization and contact: laura.vonniederhaeusern@zhdk.ch
The event will also be streamed online. The zoom link is below:
https://zhdk.zoom.us/j/68987497980?pwd=N3JbqOezZHgnq9Mirsa7XbOxWfkS81.1