Roots, Thorns


Rental Format(s): 16mm film

Filmed on a return visit with the Ashaninka in the tropical forest of eastern Peru. Moving in close to people who still live with the land, cook over fires, and raise their children in the forest. Earth, river, animals, weather. Forces of nature and of turmoil. Forces that surround the senses at all times.

"The Peru films do not just give us the familiar thrill of a look at a (strange) way of life; rather something quite amazing takes place: a kind of re-scaling of perception, so that the other space of the Ashaninka, while retaining it's everydayness and relative indiscernibility, can for a moment be experienced its own terms."
--Ackbar Abbas, Hong Kong University, Univ. of California-Irvine

"Filmmaker Diane Kitchen is creating a new, complex style of ethnographic film, one that is visually rich and conceptually thick, that emphasizes intimacy, lyricism, metaphor, and sometimes startling images drawn from her subjects' daily lives. Filmed among the Ashaninka people of Eastern Peru, it shifts between their fears connected with day-to-day living and those brought on by Peru's current political turmoil (the Shining Path guerrillas carry out night-time terrorist raids on Ashaninka villages)."
--Extension Media Center, Univ. of California-Berkeley

Xenon balanced print available upon request.

Rental Fees

  Fee  
16mm film $85.00  

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