{"id":1521,"date":"2016-07-21T14:20:54","date_gmt":"2016-07-21T14:20:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/?p=1521"},"modified":"2017-12-01T14:02:13","modified_gmt":"2017-12-01T14:02:13","slug":"embrace-of-the-serpent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/2016\/07\/21\/embrace-of-the-serpent\/","title":{"rendered":"Falling into the Embrace of the Serpent by Deborah Shaw"},"content":{"rendered":"

Medi\u00e1tico\u00a0is delighted to present a\u00a0consideration of the much heralded Colombian film<\/em>\u00a0Embrace of the Serpent by<\/em>\u00a0Deborah Shaw<\/a>, Reader in Film Studies at the University of Portsmouth<\/em>. Her research interests include transnational film theory, and Latin American cinema, and she has published widely in these areas. She is the founding co-editor of the Routledge journal <\/em>Transnational Cinemas, and her books include <\/em>Contemporary Latin American Cinema: Ten Key Films\u00a0(Continuum Publishers, 2003), <\/em>The Three Amigos: The Transnational Filmmaking of Guillermo del Toro, Alejandro Gonz\u00e1lez I\u00f1\u00e1rritu, and Alfonso Cuar\u00f3n\u00a0(Manchester University Press, 2013), <\/em>The Transnational Fantasies of Guillermo del Toro,<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0co-edited with Ann Davies and Dolores Tierney (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), and\u00a0<\/em>Latin American Women Filmmakers: Production, Politics, Poetics, co-edited with Deborah Martin for the World Cinema Series (forthcoming at I.B.Tauris).<\/em><\/p>\n

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Every so often a special film comes along and slaps us in the face and demands our attention. A film that\u00a0reminds us why we became and remain academics, critics and teachers. We take on these roles\u00a0because we love films that teach us about the world we live in, and because we want to share our enthusiasm and that knowledge. Learning and sharing knowledge is one of the central themes of Embrace of the Serpent<\/em>. It is an award-winning film<\/a>, securing Colombia\u2019s first Oscar nomination, for director\u00a0Ciro Guerra previously known for two films that were well received on the festival circuit: Wandering Shadows<\/em> (2004) and The Wind Journeys<\/em> (2009). Like Guerra’s previous films\u00a0Embrace of the Serpent<\/em>\u00a0has been exhibited on\u00a0the\u00a0festival circuit, but it has also found its way on to global screens small and large.<\/p>\n

Like so many recent films from Latin America, Embrace of the Serpent<\/em> is an example of transnational filmmaking. Some usual suspects feature\u00a0among its\u00a0funders, including the Dutch Hubert Bals Fund, Ibermedia, the Argentine\u00a0National Film Institute\u00a0INCAA, Argentine\u00a0production companies, the Colombian Caracol Televisi\u00f3n and the Venezuelan Nortesur Producciones. It also highlights encounters between peoples from diverse nations (the colonisers and colonised and those who study them)\u00a0and reveals the historical conflicts and tensions between them. Yet, it is deeply rooted in specific local communities (the tribes of the Colombian Amazonian jungle) and reveals their culture and concerns, and their untold stories.<\/p>\n

Embrace of the Serpent<\/em> is a film that is simple and beautiful, yet\u00a0also epic, ecological, mystical, cosmic and extra-terrestrial. It presents us with a vision of how broken people can be made whole again. It is visually gorgeous, unusually shot on film in black-and-white by cinematographer David Gallegos. In addition to its visual splendour, it provides an example of the kind of ethical filmmaking which could teach some directors a thing or two. There are evident references (noted by critics<\/a> such as Mark Kermode) to Werner Herzog\u2019s Fizcarraldo<\/em> (1982) and Francis Ford Coppola\u2019s Apocalypse Now<\/em> (1979). But, as Kermode also notes,\u00a0Embrace of the Serpent<\/em> presents a new vision of the encounter between colonisers\/invaders and indigenous people, different from that seen in previous Euro\/US centric films. Guerra reverses the colonial gaze and has his audience, along with his white protagonists, look and listen with new eyes and ears.<\/p>\n

An initial examination of\u00a0the film\u2019s genesis would suggest a continuation of the focus on white colonisers\/invaders. Part of the source material comes from the ethnographic journals of two real-life German and American explorer\/scientists Theodor Koch-Gr\u00fcnberg and Richard Evans Schultes. In the film they transform into Theo(dor) von Martius (Jan Bijvoet) and Evan (Brionne Davis). The film places the white men in the Amazonian jungle in the region of Vaup\u00e9s in Colombia in search of the sacred (fictional) yakruna plant known for its healing properties.<\/p>\n