Documentário: "Spirits of the rainforest "

Part one :
Introduction



Andy Jillings' famous ethnographical documentary about a Yanomami community.
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Note:

This version is subtly different and more respectable than "Warriors of the Amazon", the US tv cut that Patrick Tierney denounces as ethnocidary in his red-hot book "Darkness in Eldorado".

Once again, the english translations and subtitles are clumsily home-made, and I apologise for their contestable quality.

Part two :
Recreational drugs and shamanism



Part three :
Diplomacy, death and endo-cannibalism



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Note :
Some anthropologists have expressed skepticism about this allegedly 20 years long war, claiming that no fences could be seen around the villages and that such wars don't usually last more than two years. Many aspects of this documentary raise the old question of to what extend it has been staged. The absence of western clothes, for instance, which has surprised anthropologists who noticed other signs of acculturation, may have been a specific demand by the film crew.

Originally, Jillings's intended title was "The art of speaking well". Maybe the movie would had been more focused on the importance of words (ritualized dialogues and speeches) in yanomami society. At the demand of the producers, the "Warriors of the Amazon" version has been exagerately focused on yanomami warfare, probably to match better the well-spread image of Yanomami as 'fierce people', as built by some old sociobiology studies (and deconstructed by anthropological researches).

Part four :
Gathering



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Note :

At least, contrarily to this version, "Warriors of the Amazon" mentions the fact that, in yanomami culture, a dead person's name is normally taboo and shouldn't be uttered. This is the reason why, in this sequence, enquiries are made through play on words and approximations. "Spirits of the rainforest" forgets to precise this.

Also, according to the "Warriors of the Amazon" commentary, the two shamans are actually curing each other from curses they had previously put on each other.

Part five :
Feast



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One big quality of this movie (and all versions of it), is Taraema's story. Instead of essentializing anonymous members of an ethnicity, Jillings gave a name and a voice to an individual person, with her own life, and shows values and traditions through their transgression and atypical life trajectories. It cancels a bit the artificial distance of exotism, humanizes his subject, and reminds us that -to the contrary of what many documentaries let us believe- in every societies, all people and all lives are always atypical.

Part six :
Exchanges



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Note:

The part where Hisiwe mentions what the filming crew owes him is absent from the "Warriors of the Amazon" cut, just like all other mentions of the crew and their impact (such as the piles of feathers, or the negociations at the beginning of this version here). Showing this aspect is an important quality of the "Spirits of the rainforest" cut. Still, according to an interpreter that Patrick Tierney interviewed years later, Hisiwe originally added "...for what we have suffered for the film." to his list of demands.

Part seven :
Taraema's life, Torumi's death



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Note:

One of the most solid criticisms that has been made about this documentary concerns the death of Torumi (whose health was used as a major plot device in the "Warriors of the Amazon" cut). Basically, the crew has been accused of having let her die, in order to illustrate the natural inevitability of the Yanomami's disparition, an old and dangerous cliché in popular ethnology. Actually it seems that the crew had brought a doctor, who failed to diagnose and treat her disease. This leads to another criticism : why not even mentioning the interaction with the doctor, if not to exagerate the romantic idea of remoteness and exotism.

Another point regards how shocking it would have been, for the Yanomami, to have a deceased person's image taken like that. Hisiwe mentions earlier the price he asked for allowing the shooting. It has been estimated that enormous amount of goods and money must have been offered to compensate these particular shots. According to Tierney, the community's dissensions about the authorisation to film were so strong that they lead to new hostilities after the crew's departure.