Indigenous Cinematics: The Legal Lives of Indigenous Filmmaking in Abiayala/Latin America

Research output: Contribution to conferencePaper

Abstract / Description of output

In Indigenous film cultures across Abiayala/Latin America, the connection with Law is (at least) threefold: cinema portrays legal doxa, notably concerning territoriality and colonial claims to land and water; films – including the vast ethnographic archive and new, original works – are used to support particular legal cases; and productions index plural epistemological claims that are not easily subsumed in or accommodated by western notions of jurisprudence or intellectual and cultural property law. First Nations’ legal systems are mobilised through language, song, dance, storytelling, weaving, painting, and ritual, among other cultural expressions, all of which are conjugated through cinema, inflecting the politics of attribution, authorship and authority across the region. Origin stories and cosmological principals become paradigmatic for cinematic (re)creation, suffusing films with a purpose which pushes, to borrow the words of Lúcia Nagib and Anne Jerslev, “intermediality to its ultimate boundary, which is the division between art and life” (2014, p. xxiv).

This paper will examine one permutation of the complex ways in which diverse Indigenous systems of law might be (re)shaped or interpreted audiovisually. My analysis will centre on the first fiction feature produced in Wayuunaiki, the language of the binational Wayúu people, whose homelands traverse the Colombo-Venezuelan border. La raíz de la resistencia (The Roots of Resistance) (Jorge Montiel/Maikiraalasalii Collective, 2012) deploys a Wayúu song, a jayeechi, alongside other vessels of law, to craft a complex narrative architecture designed to collapse, precisely, the boundary drawn between law and culture as distinguishable media. In this way, the film is a compelling example of how cinematic story contains Wayúu principles and processes of doing law.
Original languageEnglish
Publication statusUnpublished - 14 Dec 2023
EventDeus Ex Machina – Law – Technology – Humanities: Law Literature and Humanities Association of Australasia Conference 2023 - Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia
Duration: 11 Dec 202314 Dec 2023
https://research.qut.edu.au/htlc/deus-ex-machina-law-technology-humanities/

Conference

ConferenceDeus Ex Machina – Law – Technology – Humanities
Country/TerritoryAustralia
CityBrisbane
Period11/12/2314/12/23
Internet address

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