Making Birdwatchers

Birdwatchers:  A tribe's fight for justice

The cast had never acted and scripts were impossible, but Chilean director Marco Bechis still managed to make his film about obscure Brazilian Indians. Tom Phillips finds out how

By Tom PhillipsWhen Bechis touched down in Brazil in April 2004, he came expecting to make a film about the Indians of the Amazon rainforest: remote and ancient tribes who wielded bows and arrows and lived in straw huts hidden deep in the jungle. "I wanted to do a film about indigenous people in Latin America. But [like] every romantic European, I was supposed to do a film about the Amazon," says Bechis.

Instead, acting on the advice of members of indigenous rights group Survival International, whom he had met in Milan, Bechis travelled to the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul. There he found Vilhava and the Guaraní-Kaiowá people struggling to regain their land, thousands of miles south of the world's largest tropical rainforest. "When I met the Kaiowá just dressed in normal clothes, drinking alcohol and using mobile phones–even if they were never charged up because they don't have electricity–I said: 'This is what Indians are today. This is the film.'"

Shot over 10 weeks in 2007, Birdwatchers focuses on a group of Guaraní-Kaiowá as they attempt to reclaim their land from a local farmer, in what is known in Portuguese as a retomada or "retaking." While the wealthy cattle rancher kicks back on his idyllic country estate, showing European birdwatchers slides of the local wildlife, the Guaraní-Kaiowá eke out a precarious existence, slaving away on sugar cane plantations and living in a shabby squatter settlement.Comment:  Kind of lame that Bechis wanted to devote his time and money to make a romantic film about Indians--a subject he apparently knew little about. But at least he got straightened out when he actually met the Indians.

Then there's this tidbit:Bechis believes working with untrained performers gave the film a realism that would have been impossible with non-indigenous actors. Often Vilhava or other cast members would approach him and say: "Listen, Marco: I can do it like you want–but I wouldn't do it like that."Thanks for succinctly stating the benefit of using indigenous actors. Twilight producers, take note.

For more on the subject, see The Best Indian Movies.

Below:  "Ademilson Concianza Verga as Irineu in Birdwatchers."