Floating Cinema and Audiovisual Creation

By: Lucia Ixchiu.

We departed from the port of Tabatinga, heading upriver to immerse ourselves in a journey of floating cinema. From Iquitos, and several months prior, the team from the Muyuna collective—a group of artists, filmmakers, and cultural managers who have embraced cinema as a tool for territorial defense—expressed their desire to join and share their work and what they do best: community filmmaking.

The day began with a call to a sharing circle where we moved our bodies, danced, and received the first instructions for what would be the start of a process that, for many of the Indigenous youth attending, was their first-ever film workshop.

A storytelling exercise allowed us to unite our voices at the beginning of a collective, community-driven, and floating process. This process took place over four of the five days we navigated the Marañón River, with the lush jungle as our backdrop. It was a time of work sessions, dialogue, and learning for the entire flotilla, with everyone participating in one way or another.

Cinema, cameras, and all our creativity took over the boat’s top deck. On this vessel, three groups were thinking, writing, and filming their movies, guided by the Muyuna team. On this boat, dreams have been part of the entire journey.

Filming and initial edits took shape during the stretch from Tabatinga to Manaus, where the idea of creating a film festival for the flotilla’s audiovisual creations was born. This makes the journey even more inspiring—to tell and narrate our own story from our diversity, from the different languages and biomes that are part of the Yaku Mama.

Making dreams come true. For some of the attendees, besides it being their first time leaving their country, it was also the first time they held a camera, a clapperboard, and sound equipment. To dream of using cinema not only to tell our stories but also to create a space to defend our territory.