IN COLLABORATION WITH THE DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY
WEDNESDAY MARCH 30th, 5-7 PM
Anthropology Department, 25 Waverly Place, Kriser Screening Room
Lucas Bessire (Anthropology, University of Oklahoma) presents new, short collaborative films made with indigenous Ayoreo filmmakers from South America.
The Ayoreo Video Project is an experiment in Indigenous empowerment through collaborative video-making by Ayoreo-speaking people, members of a small, cross-border, recently contacted and severely marginalized Indigenous group of the Bolivian and Paraguayan Gran Chaco region. Threatened by the massive destruction of their ancestral homelands, the impoverished Ayoreo now struggle to survive in widely scattered rural villages and urban slums. Building on a decade of field-based research with Ayoreo, Bessire examines the intersection of Indigenous media, performative subjectivity and ethnographic advocacy.