Peruvian director Tatiana Fuentes Sadowski presents in the Forum section of this year’s Berlinale her newest documentary The Memory of Butterflies . With this Peruvian-Portuguese coproduction, she approaches the history of colonisation in Peru and the crimes done to indigenous people in the name of profit. We spoke to her about the archival material she used and the visual language she developed.
Cineuropa: How did you start working on the film?
Tatiana Fuentes Sadowski: It was a very long process. I started this project around 2015, when I first discovered the photo of Omarino and Aredomi, in which they are in London, holding hands. I was very touched by this image, by their gaze. It didn’t get out of my mind. So I began to investigate the context of their story, to search in the archives. I began to enter this propaganda context of the beginning of the 20th century, in the context of the Amazon specifically. I started to find my own approach with the images. I had to deal with the feelings they provoked in me, it was something very intimate.
How did you find your approach finally?
I was confronted myself with the context of propaganda images. I was aware of the intention of these images, that they were created to hide the genocide that was happening in that moment, during the rubber exploitation. I had to give them a new meaning. To use them, but against them, so to speak. I wanted to deconstruct them and to find some of this kind of intimacy or connection to people that they represent.
How accessible was the archive material?
La Casarana was a company that was active in the exploitation of rubber in Peru. An album with photographs that belonged to them was found in 2015. In it was also the photo of Omarino und Aredomi, alongside mostly propaganda photos disguising their crimes towards indigenous people. So, this material is available. Other pictures are kept in different countries, many in Brazil, others in Ireland and England. We had access to these images through the catalogues of the institutions. As for the video material, we found two different kinds of material. Two works done by Silvino Santos. Firstly, the rubber company itself had commanded him to do a video. In the last year of our editing, a new film by Santos appeared, in which he uses these same images in another context, never telling where they are originally from. This showed once again, to me, that documentary is never objective, it’s always about the perspective. I found new images in it, too, which we used for our film.
Did you share these images with the communities?
When we took these archive images to the communities, their reaction was really impressive. They saw their ancestors. Other than us, they were first and foremost touched and welcomed the photos. They drew on them, they had a kind relationship with them. It was powerful and beautiful. And it was something that really changed the perspective of the film.
How did you come about the writings of Roger Casement?
They are kept in the national archives in Ireland and England. They were very nice to us. We had a lot of help from Lesley Wylie, an author and professor from Ireland. She wrote a magnificent article about Omarino and Aredomi. I discovered it, after I found the photo of the two. She helped us a lot to find all the clues about the two in Casement’s writings, who was very prolific.
You use archive images, mixed with colour and writing. What were the most important aspects of the visual concept of the film?
Concerning the images, I was interested in the details, in highlighting some small gestures, I wanted to emphasise these intentions of manipulation and control behind them. Repeating these gestures, such a hand that means stop, over and over, official narratives collapse. I was also very interested in the materiality of these archive images. That’s also why I decided to show Casement’s handwriting and not type it. I used colours to contrast the overall black and white. It was an intuition from the beginning. I wanted timeless images, but also a connection to the present. The colours were a possibility to put an emotional highlight on different moments of the story.
Can you say what you associate with butterflies, and how it is linked to the title of your film?
That is like a little secret in the film. We don’t say it or we don’t clarify it, specifically. In the Amazon, in indigenous communities, the ancestors become butterflies when they transcend.
Source: Cineuropa
