Project Treatment

Check out the treatment of the project:


A Miner's Luck

I'm Not Crazy. No really, I'm Not.

Just got back from a short trip to the Yungas of La Paz. These are the steep tropical foothills of the Andes, a description that hardly does them justice. It is a landscape that doesn't exist in any other context of the imagination. You can't really photograph it because there isn't a center of focus. Are you looking at the mountains -- long finger ridges that go on forever in all directions -- or are you looking at the valleys -- the negative space between the mountains. Or the clouds, which move across the sky in every different angle all at the same time. It's not a landscape I can explain or even understand.

This trip include a visit to Santa Rosa de Lima and a community called Chillata. Chillata is about a two hour walk from the main road. No cars, no nothing. It's a pretty heavily traveled road though, because there are a number of gold mines up above the town. I saw at least eight people and two mules.

The community itself operates a mine too, which seems to be their principal cash income. At the bottom of the valley, the hillsides are covered in all coca fields. Though they said they had them here too, I didn't see any at all. The terrain is so steep and hilly that they may easily have been hidden out of eyesight from the road, but certainly it is nothing like the volume in other parts of the Yungas.

It was nice to be out of the city, and nice to be walking around in the country. And it's a challenge to find individuals and communities that are really interested in presenting their community and their reality in a documentary. How do you explain to someone who has never seen a documentary that this documentary will present a comparison between mining in the US and mining in Bolivia? How do you explain that I'm not doing this to make money, that I may break even if I get lucky, but that really what I am interested in is telling a story? Their story really.

What I am doing lies so far outside of their vision of the world and of what is possible, that it's hard to convince people that I this is really what I am doing. Come to think of it, I imagine that a number of you feel the same way.

What's interesting (and reassuring, sort of) is that in the mining towns, like Siglo XX, I found a number of people who said they wouldn't mind if I filmed them, they just wanted me to make a documentary that showed their reality. It's reassuring because it took me at least three visits to find these people and get to know them. So I think that with a little time and a lot of walking, I'll be able to find the same thing here in the Yungas.

More Problems, please

Thanks to Aziz Isham, I solved the problem of the translator. The problem with a translator is that the American miner, Hugh, doesn't speak Spanish. Bringing him to Bolivia he will be able to see things and react to that, but he won't be able to react directly to what the people say. Plus everything in Spanish will have to be subtitled, and who reads subtitles. Bah. So we need an interpretor who will filter all of this information from Spanish to English and back again. Which sounds like a really boring way to make a film.

Aziz astutely raised yet another issue, the last time I talked to him. He noted that the film would benefit from having two miners who could interact rather than one. Call it the sidekick problem. Our miner needs someone to play off of and to talk to. Someone to ask him engaging questions and listen to what he says. Someone interesting, knowledgeable about mining and engaging on film. What Aziz didn't realize is that by raising the sidekick problem he was really solving the translator problem. The translator and the sidekick are one and the same.

I just finished a great interview with the second miner, Pedro. He started working in the mines in Cerro Rico in Potosi when he was very young, after his father had a bad accident and needed the help. From there, he began working as an assistant to one of the tour operators who bring gringos into the cooperatives of Cerro Rico. He taught himself English with the tourists and tripled his pay. He now works occasionally in the mines and occasionally as a guide.

Here's what struck me about Pedro when I met him two years ago. He stopped and asked his group of tourists in the mine and asked them why they wanted to see the mines in Potosi. It wasn't aggressive at all, but it showed a curiosity and thoughtfulness that is uncommon among bolivian tour guides. Enough so that, two years later, I remembered his name and was able to track him down almost instantly.

And in an interview this afternoon (with a beautiful golden sunlight and a perfect backdrop of green grasses), he proved to be curious, engaging, easygoing, entertaining. In short, it seems that my first impression was pretty accurate. Here is a translator who is interesting, knowledgeable about mining and engaging on film. Here is someone who can play off of Hugh, ask him engaging questions and listen to what he says. And a translator to boot.

So thanks to Aziz for raising solutions disguised as problems.