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Posts tagged ‘indigenous people’

A Filmmaker’s Mission: Shining Light on Afro-Bolivian Invisibility

So, you want to make a documentary film. Should be pretty easy, right? Just grab your camera, shoot, edit and you’re done. Not so fast. The multi-layered processes associated with making a film tends to be a bit more complicated and peppered with lots of starts and stops, especially financing issues. Plus everything else imaginable and some things you just can’t imagine.

In the world of filmmaking, taking on the untold story, the unimaginable and the unthinkable are often what makes film projects so incredibly appealing. Capturing history — whether its life’s smallest moments or biggest events– is often the attraction.

New Yorker Sisa Bueno, an adventurous Latina of African descent and a self-described political junkie, is learning first hand about the starts and stops of filmmaking. As a graduate of the prestigious New York University Film School, Sisa admits, “I had the naïve thought that documentaries were much easier than traditional fiction films, which is completely untrue.” Read more

Gold Rich La Toma in Turmoil

Part One of Los Afro-Latinos La Toma Feature

Today’s headlines are focused on Colombia. Stories regarding the U.S. Secret Service’s prostitution scandal in Cartagena during last month’s Summit of the Americas have brought the South American country to the forefront of international news.

But the scandal you’re not hearing about revolves around La Toma, a small Afro-Colombian community in Cauca, a gold-rich, mountainous region in Colombia’s Pacific southwest. With the price of gold soaring, foreign mining companies are swooping in and forcing out the Afro-Colombian community that has inhabited La Toma for centuries and used small-scale mining for sustenance. Read more