It was raining and I climbed wet and chilled into the car that was bringing four of us to the Latin Film Festival. On the way we talked about the third cinema article written by the authors of the film. Our discussion led to our asking the question, were we subversives in our attendance of the film? We talked about how the ethnography we would explore in Seattle would have some of the same concepts. We would be addressing what it means to be a spectator of film and an interactive audience participant. One woman in the car, because of her experience in Guatemala, voiced her excitement at her own level of participation having been to a South American country. We pulled into the parking lot across from the Midnight Sun. The windows were blacked out which gave me a feeling of secrecy and I thought of all the men and women who had seen this film in fear. The people who were making a political statement by their attendance. The walls inside the theater were black and the rows of old, worn folding chairs placed us, as viewers, in the context of the film era. These chairs were to be our hardship for the next two hours.
Caryn Cline was called upon to introduce the film and she expressed that in all the years she had read about the film this was the first time she would be viewing it.
The black and white film from 1969 showed many angles of colonialism. The film was segmented into many perspectives and layers of the injustices. The call to revolutionary action was evident in each frame. The audience shifted continuously throughout the film. The projectionist changed reels periodically and at those times my eyes roamed the audience to see solemn faces shadowed by the black and white contrasts all around them.
After the film the audience sat still, no one moved. The organizer of the film festival walked to the front and sat ,one leg beneath her, on a chair and said, wow usually people leave after a film. Does anyone want to talk about it? We sat silently, faces forward and then a man who said that he was from Puerto Rico spoke. He spoke with a Spanish accent and wore an Arizona sports sweatshirt. He was a strong handsome man in his fifties. He said the scene in the film, with the children running beside the train, reminded him of when he was a child and the children would dive into the harbor. The harbor was dirty with diesel fuel and full of man o war, he asked for the English name and someone called out jellyfish. The children would dive for quarters that the sailors on the ships would throw near the largest quantities of jellyfish and the children would be stung all over their bodies. Some of the children died. It was very dangerous. But the lure of how much a quarter could buy sent them into the water.
The organizer asked if everyone knew who the still image at the end of the film was? Che Guevara. He was a revolutionary leader who felt that the upraises should come from the people. The Puerto Rican man spoke again and he prefaced his remark with a deferment to Caryn Cline saying correct me if I am wrong you seem to be the authority here. To which she replied that she wasn't.
A man from Peru spoke about an experience he had while attending The Wall by Pink Floyd in Peru with some friends. The man stated that, before the film began, a clip was shown. The piece depicted native people and the audience members in the theater made fun of them by calling them monkeys. He said he was shocked and sickened by that experience. He talked about the section in the film where the youth is taking on the foreign culture rather than his own. Someone said that you couldn't go down the street in Cuba without seeing orange crush and coke murals.
Other people spoke, a man who had just returned from Guatemala and the woman projectionist. The woman talked about the role of apathy in keeping the people from starting a revolution. The Puerto Rican man said that she was very perceptive and that apathy is the biggest hindrance to a revolution and something that the government encourages. Caryn mentioned the death of a Latin director who had directed Death of a Beaurocrat.
The impromptu forum after the film was revealing in many ways. The people who were most vocal were from or had visited Latin countries. They wanted to share their own experiences and how they identified with the film. The urge to share their own experiences was twofold. First ,they wanted to remember the films authenticity in relation to their own past and secondly they wanted to let others know that what the film expressed was true. Some of them also gave commentary on how the problems were and were not addressed in the following years. The confirmation of the films accuracy by these people gave the film more validity to me.
Because people spoke after the film and had verbal interaction with each other we identify. We now share something in common. The next day at the screening of The Blood of the Condor I saw the man from Puerto Rico gesture to another man from La Hora de los Hornos to sit down next to him. They did not know each other previously. They were interacting now because they had communicated their stories together about their own countries and also their present shared history, the film. The film was the bridge between the two men.
The man from Peru's experience at The Wall shocked him and made him realize that his own people were losing contact with their heritage and their culture. He did not expect to find that kind of prejudice from his own country. This situation speaks to the generation gap and the youths desire to negate all that is foreign to them while embracing the fashions of the colonizers. The youth were mimicing the forces that were keeping them oppressed. He was also disturbed by the association of the natives with monkeys. He felt it on a personal level as well as a cultural level and the impact of the experience remained with him.
The four of us, with me driving this time, climbed into the car and headed homeward. We did not discuss the film and instead professed our tiredness and sang along to Aretha Franklin. The conversation after the film provided a seminar for the student group so that on the way home we did not feel the need to voice our insights about the film. We could lapse into our own thoughts and engage in the music.
