“The Origin of the Tikuna People” – The Rescue of a Myth and a Language
Seeking to make Colombia’s indigenous communities visible, the CHC produced, together with the community, its first ethnographic feature film, “The Origin of the Tikuna People,” which was recorded in 2008 and awarded Best First Film at the 2009 Big Apple Latin American Film Awards – New York, and the 2008 ICT Award from the Colombian Ministry of Culture.
This is an initiative of the indigenous community of Nazareth, which emerged as a project of the IBURI Channel (community television channel).
The film narrates, according to ancestral beliefs, the origin of this ethnic group that extends across Brazil, Colombia and Peru, thus achieving an audiovisual memory of the tradition revealed through oral means for centuries.
This first film – with a narrative, filmed with the participation of the Indigenous people of Nazareth – Amazonas, is the first production in Colombia, recorded in a language other than Spanish and with Indigenous actors and more than 60% of the technical staff, also Indigenous. It received an award from the Ministry of Culture in the category of ICT with social inclusion, with the support of the Grancolombiano Polytechnic and the CHC. It was subtitled in Spanish, German, English, French, Portuguese and Italian. It is worth noting that the film has become an element that makes the ethnic groups of the Amazon visible.
From the Amazon to the Big Apple
On September 17, 2009, the jury of the “La Gran Manzana del Cine Latinoamericano” Awards awarded the trophy in the category of Best First Feature Film to the feature film “El Origen del Pueblo Tikuna” (The Origin of the Tikuna People), which tells the creation myth according to the indigenous peoples of the Amazonian Trapeze.
This film, which revealed the situation of an ethnic minority in the Amazonian countries and which had natives of these ethnic groups as actors, was labeled as sacred by the elders of the people and can now be seen in many places around the world that value these cultural and artistic manifestations.
For the CHC it is a pride to share with the general public, with those who support its work and with those who barely hear their name, the joy that beats in the hearts of its protagonists, members of the indigenous community, of its director (Gustavo de la Hoz) and of its producer (Dorothea Wolf Nurnberg) who is also the founder and legal representative of the Corporation.
Kudos to the indigenous actors who interpreted their story for those of us who didn’t know it.
