Altiplano - Peter Brosens - Jessica Woodworth

Magaly Solier è Saturnina, bravissima attrice di tanti film, come in questo.
la storia è di sfruttamento e colonialismo solito, indios si ammalano e muoiono, bravi medici europei (tra cui Oliver Gourmet) aiutano, ma non scalfiscono i meccanismi di morte.
la fotografia è davvero eccezionale, un film da non perdere - Ismaele

A mercury spill within the village of Choropampa during 2000 from a silver mine in the Andes is carried downslope to those living immediately below, producing blindness and other forms of sickness. In Altiplano the event is portrayed within a fictional Turubamba, Perú, where non-Spanish-speaking indigenous people center their lives around a Catholicism that puts much stress on the Virgin Mary. A clinic run by foreigners provides cataract operations, but none of the ophthalmologists is a general practitioner. When some die, they revolt against the only outsiders they know—the physicians, not the miners. One ophthalmologist is killed by the mob, whereupon the clinic closes, leaving the native people to cope with traditional if ineffective resources, and the mining continues operation as before…

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…Altiplano is both a criticism of the economic and ecological crimes that occurred in Peru in 2000 and a quasi-ethnological investigation into the mystical rituals of the local population. The film also explores the subject of the power of the image ("A photo has never stopped a war" - "I won’t die silently or invisibly"). This host of issues and a highly personal approach make this a fascinating and resolutely unusual work…

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…Brosens and Woodworth use the breathtaking natural scenery of Peru as the stage for their symbolist theater, populated with masked Sun, Moon and Spirit figures that form a colonnade of trumpeters. Garments of the dead are burnt to bitter ashes; the river carries the sorrow. Familiar symbols unite the two distant planes: Grace’s shot of her Iraqui guide at the moment of his death resembles the crucified Christ; the masked Spirits lay the body of Saturnina (Magaly Solier) under the long shadow of a stone cross.

Long shots from moving cameras compose the landscape, revealing each element like successive lines in a poem. Unexpectedly, it is the Belgian segment, away from the bleaching sun of the high altitude, that takes on the look of magical realism; the sets are abstract, time is contiguous. A ruined cathedral is a picnic ground, then a cemetery. When the camera pans past a pillar, the mourners have disappeared, and it is Grace contemplating a journey to the high plains, where Max had breathed his last. This Europe under an overcast sky is for Grace unreality itself, floating between there and now…

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Derrière les qualités esthétiques indéniables de ce film belge, magnifiant les paysages et l'architecture rurale de l'Altiplano (Cordillère des Andes), se cache un film où chaque détail est sur-signifiant, où la symbolique l'emporte sur la moindre logique de narration. D'autant que l'idée du traumatisme initial vouant une photographe à ne plus suivre les conflits dont il est sensé rendre compte, ne sert finalement pas à grand chose. Et le retrait du monde, en un territoire isolé, n'en cache pas moins d'autres horreurs, on l'aura vite compris, cette fois-ci liées à la cupidité de l'homme, exploitant ses semblables…

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