I Get by with a Little Help

It's been, to say the least, a busy couple of weeks, and things have been progressing well.

I have finished a pretty good version of the treatment (click the link in the last post). You will note the beautiful cover, which my friend Gisel put together. She took a photo that Taylor shot and decided that it looked best as a dime store western cover.
And that is just what I'm after, with a few roles reversed here and there. A number of people read it, including Jeff, his dad, Heather and Carolina. Little by little, it gets better and better.

I also went to Siglo XX with Sixto Choque, who helped me get some production photos for the film. I shot a little bit of video, and sixto shot a bunch of photos, which I think will be really good for future graphic design needs and for video stills. I've been working with a cuadrillo of miners who keep inviting me back to their workplace again and again. It's their friendship and welcome most of all that makes this kind of work possible.

We also went to Macha, where the communities from the region celebrate the fiesta de la cruz by banding together and beating the snot out of each other. It's kind of a weird spectacle -- it happens at this time of year in Macha and in a number of other communities, and it happens throughout the north of Potosi throughout the year.

What struck me most from this spectacle is the lack of understanding between people who live in the campo and people who live in the city. The people who are from the town of Macha, where the festival happens every year, just lack any in depth understanding of the festival or the communities around Macha. Yes, they speak Quechua, but they can't identify the community relationships or even explain what the fiesta means to the people who participate. Not that I can either, but I'm not trying to be part of this multicultural, multiethnic society of Bolivia.

At any rate, I hope to post some of Sixto's photos in a subsequent post.

And we've been editing. Carolina has been helping me to cut together a short trailer for the film and a ten minute short of miners in Siglo. She has a very good eye, a remarkable capacity to deal with schedule changes and she instantly understood the project and what I am aiming for. I think that we'll get a really good trailer, once I finish getting the footage I'll need from Taylor in Nevada in a couple of weeks.

Also, Daniela just helped me move all of my stuff into her house.