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''Aluna'' is a 2012 feature-length
documentary film
A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in te ...
sequel to the 1990
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
documentary ''
From the Heart of The World: Elder Brother's Warning''. The first documentary showed an ancient
Kogi tribe civilisation (the Elder Brother) who emerge to offer their concern for people of the
modern world (Younger Brother). Younger Brother is urged to change or suffer
environmental disaster
An environmental disaster or ecological disaster is defined as a catastrophic event regarding the natural environment that is due to human activity.Jared M. Diamond, '' Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed'', 2005 This point disti ...
. After offering the warning, the
Kogi
Kogi State is a state in the North Central region of Nigeria, bordered to the west by the states of Ekiti and Kwara, to the north by the Federal Capital Territory, to the northeast by Nasarawa State, to the northwest by Niger State, to th ...
retreat to their community hidden in the mountains of the
Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta
The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta (English: ''Snow-Covered Mountain Range of Saint Martha'') is an isolated mountain range in northern Colombia, separate from the Andes range that runs through the north of the country. Reaching an elevation of ...
,
Colombia.
In the second documentary, the
Kogis have re-emerged, realising that the importance of their warning was not grasped. As well as warning Younger Brother, they have decided to share their understandings of how nature works in the belief that doing so will share their burden of healing the dying planet.
Content summary
Realising that their warning in 1990 was not fully grasped, the
Kogis become more
proactive
Proactivity or proactive behavior refers to self-initiated behavior that endeavours to solve a problem before it has occurred. Proactive behavior involves acting in advance of a future situation, rather than reacting. It refers to taking control o ...
. Even though their civilisation has never used wheels or created writing, they diligently study film cameras and train their own indigenous
film crew
A film crew is a group of people, hired by a production company, for the purpose of producing a film or motion picture. The crew is distinguished from the cast, as the cast are understood to be the actors who appear in front of the camera o ...
. The
Kogis ask
Alan Ereira
Alan Ereira is a British author, historian and documentary filmmaker. He is a Professor of Practice at the University of Wales, Trinity St. David.
Life
Educated at Kilburn Grammar School, Ereira subsequently worked at the BBC on television an ...
, whom they allowed to film their 1990 message, to assist. The
Kogi Mamos decide that there will be "no more secrets": They want to demonstrate their planetary healing sciences in front of the cameras to the modern world and show visible and measurable results. They also wish to teach other people how to conduct these sciences in order to heal the world. They speak with modern scientists in the belief that they have a different science to show them.
Kogi demonstration
To help convince the
modern world of the importance preserving the planet, the Kogi demonstrate its
interconnectivity
In telecommunications, interconnection is the physical linking of a carrier's network with equipment or facilities not belonging to that network. The term may refer to a connection between a carrier's facilities and the equipment belonging t ...
.
A small group of
Kogis travel to
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
to fetch 400 kilometres (250 miles) of
gold thread
Goldwork is the art of embroidery using metal threads. It is particularly prized for the way light plays on it. The term "goldwork" is used even when the threads are imitation gold, silver, or copper. The metal wires used to make the threads have ...
, reportedly the longest ever made.
Mama Shibulata, one of the
Kogis Mamos in the group, visits the observatory at the
University of London
The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degree ...
where he meets
Richard Ellis, the Steele Professor of Astronomy. Ellis is astounded by Shibulata's knowledge of both the
Solar System
The Solar System Capitalization of the name varies. The International Astronomical Union, the authoritative body regarding astronomical nomenclature, specifies capitalizing the names of all individual astronomical objects but uses mixed "Solar ...
and astronomical discoveries such as
dark energy
In physical cosmology and astronomy, dark energy is an unknown form of energy that affects the universe on the largest scales. The first observational evidence for its existence came from measurements of supernovas, which showed that the univ ...
.
After their return to
Colombia with the gold thread, the Kogis conduct the demonstration. A group of leading modern scientists observe the results and find that the science of the
Mamos may be at the 'cutting edge'
"They lay the gold thread from one river estuary
An estuary is a partially enclosed coastal body of brackish water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it, and with a free connection to the open sea. Estuaries form a transition zone between river environments and maritime environm ...
in Colombia to another in order to show how the destruction of river estuaries
An estuary is a partially enclosed coastal body of brackish water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it, and with a free connection to the open sea. Estuaries form a transition zone between river environments and maritime environmen ...
feeds back ''up'' the river in the end to destroy the source of the river. Showing the interconnectedness of everything on the earth, this was the key element in their task, the purpose of which was showing that the earth itself is a living body in which everything is interconnected, and damage to some of it is damage to all of it."— Alan Ereira
Alan Ereira is a British author, historian and documentary filmmaker. He is a Professor of Practice at the University of Wales, Trinity St. David.
Life
Educated at Kilburn Grammar School, Ereira subsequently worked at the BBC on television an ...
.
Participation at UN summits
The 1990 documentary
From the Heart of The World: Elder Brother's Warning was shown at the
Earth Summit
The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), also known as the Rio Conference or the Earth Summit (Portuguese: ECO92), was a major United Nations conference held in Rio de Janeiro from June 3 to June 14, 1992.
Earth Su ...
in
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro ( , , ; literally 'River of January'), or simply Rio, is the capital of the state of the same name, Brazil's third-most populous state, and the second-most populous city in Brazil, after São Paulo. Listed by the GaWC as a ...
in 1992 and was seen to inspire delegates to take action.
'Aluna' was produced in time for another important UN environmental conference, the
United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development
The United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD), also known as Rio 2012, Rio+20 (), or Earth Summit 2012 was the third international conference on sustainable development aimed at reconciling the economic and environmental goals ...
held at
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro ( , , ; literally 'River of January'), or simply Rio, is the capital of the state of the same name, Brazil's third-most populous state, and the second-most populous city in Brazil, after São Paulo. Listed by the GaWC as a ...
from 20–22 June 2012. Two
Kogi Mamos were expected to attend the conference.
Production
![Alan Ereira Kogi Mama](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0d/Alan_Ereira_Kogi_Mama.jpg)
Originally the budget was set at £270,000.
Alan Ereira
Alan Ereira is a British author, historian and documentary filmmaker. He is a Professor of Practice at the University of Wales, Trinity St. David.
Life
Educated at Kilburn Grammar School, Ereira subsequently worked at the BBC on television an ...
got
Bruce Parry
Bruce Parry (born 17 March 1969) is an English documentarian, indigenous rights advocate, author, explorer, trek leader and former Royal Marines commando officer. He employs an ethnographic style and a form of participant observation for his d ...
interested in the project and Parry met with the Kogi, who agreed to the project. With Parry involved, the BBC offered £180,000 and
Indus Films offered a further £20,000. However, when Bruce Parry became 'committed to another project', the offer of funding from the BBC was withdrawn. Therefore,
Alan Ereira
Alan Ereira is a British author, historian and documentary filmmaker. He is a Professor of Practice at the University of Wales, Trinity St. David.
Life
Educated at Kilburn Grammar School, Ereira subsequently worked at the BBC on television an ...
had to seek alternative funding. Some of this funding came from the British charity
The Onaway Trust, which also helped fund
Ereira's book on the Kogis,
The Heart of the World
''The Heart of the World'' is a short film written and directed by Guy Maddin, produced for the 2000 Toronto International Film Festival. Maddin was one of a number of directors (including Atom Egoyan and David Cronenberg) commissioned to make four ...
.
The
Kogis had their own indigenous film crew, enabling the film to include previously unrecorded holy sites and practices that other film crews had been prohibited from seeing. Throughout the collaboration, the Kogis exercised their
autonomy while the film's
director
Director may refer to:
Literature
* ''Director'' (magazine), a British magazine
* ''The Director'' (novel), a 1971 novel by Henry Denker
* ''The Director'' (play), a 2000 play by Nancy Hasty
Music
* Director (band), an Irish rock band
* ''D ...
,
Alan Ereira
Alan Ereira is a British author, historian and documentary filmmaker. He is a Professor of Practice at the University of Wales, Trinity St. David.
Life
Educated at Kilburn Grammar School, Ereira subsequently worked at the BBC on television an ...
, looked forward to see what the indigenous crew had recorded. The Mamas took charge of what was going to be filmed and consulted Aluna through
divinations.
The collaboration between the indigenous crew and the European camera crews enabled
Alan Ereira
Alan Ereira is a British author, historian and documentary filmmaker. He is a Professor of Practice at the University of Wales, Trinity St. David.
Life
Educated at Kilburn Grammar School, Ereira subsequently worked at the BBC on television an ...
to bring a
camera operator and a
sound recordist
Sound recording and reproduction is the electrical, mechanical, electronic, or digital inscription and re-creation of sound waves, such as spoken voice, singing, instrumental music, or sound effects. The two main classes of sound recording te ...
to work with their indigenous counterparts in Colombia.
Participation in festivals
''Aluna'' was chosen to be shown at the 2012
Sheffield International Documentary Festival
Sheffield DocFest (formerly styled Sheffield Doc/Fest), short for Sheffield International Documentary Festival (SIDF), is an international documentary festival and Marketplace held annually in Sheffield, England.
The Festival includes film sc ...
where it would have its
World premiere
A première, also spelled premiere, is the debut (first public presentation) of a play, film, dance, or musical composition.
A work will often have many premières: a world première (the first time it is shown anywhere in the world), its firs ...
.
References
External links
*''http://www.alunathemovie.com/'' Official website of the second and final Kogi Mamos documentary
*''http://www.taironatrust.org'' Information about the Kogis in South America
*
Brief video report' 2011 video report by Alan Ereira after filming in Colombia
*''https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftFbCwJfs1I'' Official YouTube link
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Aluna
Documentary films about environmental issues
Indigenous cinema in Latin America
2012 films
2012 documentary films
Colombian documentary films
British documentary films
British independent films
2010s British films