Reenact, Reimagine: Performative Indigenous Documentaries of Bolivia and Brazil

Abstract

While the strength and vitality of contemporary Latin American cinemas are recognized worldwide, less is known of the accomplished narrative, documentary, and post-colonial video practices that have been generated by and within its indigenous communities in recent decades. Their production and circulation processes have been of more interest to visual anthropologists under the rubric “indigenous media,” which I will refer to as specific forms of media expression conceptualized, produced, and/or created by indigenous peoples around the globe, following Wilson and Stewart (2008). This is a field that emerged in the convergence of several disciplinary advances: as an extension of experimental and activist video practices, alongside shifts toward reflexivity in the ethnographic documentary, and through the use of realism and cinema verité techniques in subaltern filmmaking, among others. Thus, non-indigenous researchers and filmmakers engaged in training indigenous communities began to see media-making as a powerful way to promote advocacy, and ultimately, to foster self-determination. Indigenous video productions are being used to rethink history, critically and creatively countering foundational narratives on indigeneity that emerged from the ethnographic documents since first contact, captured in footage, photos, and written accounts produced with Western technologies and usually from a European or Eurocentric point of view, replicated in myriad fictional renderings emanating from Hollywood and beyond.