The Sand and the Rain is an adventure which takes place at the crossroads of two worlds. What happens when three Qataris, accustomed to a life of creature comforts, find themselves in an indigenous community deep in the world’s largest rainforest? And how will three indigenous shamans fare when the tables are turned, and they find themselves in the concrete jungle of Qatar?
The film explores how two such contrasting worlds are in fact bound by invisible links. It shows us why, now more than ever, ancient cultures are humanity’s greatest resource.

The indigenous cultures of the Colombian Amazon have hundreds of sacred sites. They are places where special events have happened, where the gods have been born or sown crops or left important teachings. At the same time, they are places which are very important for the ecological web of the region, critical nodes for maintaining the environmental balance of the territory. One of the most sacred places for the cultures of the Colombian Amazon is called La Libertad (Liberty) and it is endangered: a Canadian mining company wants to explore for gold there. To prevent this happening, the local communities have mobilized themselves to turn this part of their territory into a natural park. It is a complicated struggle, where some things may be won and others lost but what is ultimately at stake is the world itself or the possibility of living in harmony with it. And the guardians of la Libertad are doing what they can to win.

Treatment

The documentary mixes shots taken in the zone of landscapes, river journeys and the payés (spiritual leaders of the tribes) with animations which illustrate and explain their cosmology and view of the world. Beyond being an account of these sacred places or a denunciation of the indiscriminate exploitation of the Amazon, the documentary seeks to show that the notion of the sacred among the peoples of the Amazon is closely linked to their way of life and their equilibrium with the nature of which they are part. All this is being threatened, partly because other human groups do not share this strong identification with their natural surroundings. The contrast between two visions of the world is clearly seen in La Libertad, one of these sacred places, a key to the history of these nations and the environmental well-being of their region, which is in danger of being razed by a mining company. Here we may see, in a particular dramatic form, what happens when two radically different ways of looking at the world clash.

Project developed by 4direcciones, and The GAIA Amazonas Foundation

Documentary series (musical)

12 episodes x 30’
On air in Señal Colombia during 2008
Monday 8:30pm, Saturday 5:00pm

Synopsis

Because history is more than battles and independence heroes, more than the elections and new constitutions which appear every so often. History’s B-Sides explores past events whose effects continue to resonate, in one way or another, in the present. Each chapter seeks to trigger the memories which lie dormant in objects, places, people, plants, songs and grandparents’ stories. With music, imagination and strict historical grounding, episodes in Colombian history such as the 1928 Banana Workers’ Strike, the nineteenth-century rubber extraction in the Amazon, the arrival of television to the country, and indigenous peoples’ struggle for greater political and cultural autonomy are portrayed to show that history isn’t stuck in the past but is rather a living process that gives shape and meaning to our own times.

Approach

The series uses historical reenactments, interviews, animation, journeys and popular songs to explore how the present bears the stamp of the past. To illustrate the intimate connections between different periods, archive images are juxtaposed with recent shots. The programs are presented by well-known Colombian musicians (Andrea Echeverri, Ana Veydo, Goyo and Tostao) who act as charismatic guides.

Project developed by 4direcciones, and The National Museum of Colombia.

Volume 1. SONG OF THE CHIEF (Cacique sonoro)

¿What do a 16th century indigenous chief, an unsolved murder in Sesquilé and a ceremonial staff of guayacán wood conserved in the National Museum of Colombia have to do with one another? Through word and song, Andrea Echeverri and the Campo Sonoro group explain how the history of Colombia forms a complex weave and a succession of surprising encounters. In this chapter we tell the story of the Mestizo Chief of Turmequé, Don Diego de Torres, and his present relationship with a Muisca indigenous community located in Sesquilé, Cundinamarca. We look at words like “Indian”, “Mestizo” and “Cacique” and we see how their meaning is important for the recovery of memories of the conquest of the high plains region of Cundinamarca and Boyacá.

Volume 2. THE MUISCA WHIRLWIND (Torbellino Muisca)

Starting from our national sport, Tejo (a stone-hurling game), we go further into the story of the Mestizo chief of Turmequé. Andrea Echeverri and the Campo Sonoro group accompany us on our journey to the past with a whirlwind, a traditional song from the high plains of Cundinamarca and Boyacá. The Muisca children of Sesquilé show us their community, their temples and their ceremonies. They reveal secrets about the tobacco plant and we watch how a number of youngsters are trying to reawaken remembrances of a people whom we thought had disappeared.

Volume 3. SON PRIETO (Black Music)

For centuries, the history of the Afro-Colombian people was ignored and in this chapter we find out the reasons for it. Goyo and Tostao of the Chocquibtown group tell us how the history of the people who reached these lands from Africa in a caravel one day became the subject of fantasies, stereotypes and, frequently, lies. Where do we find the secrets of this unwritten history?: in the songs of an oarsman on the river Atrato, hidden messages written in braids and the verses of the 19th century Black poet, Candelario Obeso. As a man from Quibdo known as “the Witch” (El Brujo) explains: “my grandfather told me, who heard it from his grandfather, who heard it from his grandmother, who heard it from her grandfather”.

Volume 4. SONG OF THE JOURNEY (Son del viaje)

Travels are an important part of the African peoples who arrived in America, leaving their homelands far behind. Their cultures reborn in Colombia, these Black inhabitants of Colombian coasts and islands have gone through many migrations over the centuries. In this chapter we hear songs about journeys: the one which takes us far from home and the other one which everyone must undertake: to the beyond. One woman sings an alabao (song of praise) and another an arrullo (lullaby). Songs and stories, now found in the cities, which conserve echoes and memories of the past and of the lands they were uprooted from. How do you reconstruct an identity and culture associated with a place you had to abandon ?

Volume 5. OH, MY LAND! (Ay mi tierra!)

¿What is a territory for us? How do we define it? What is our relationship to it? In the music of the Llanos or Eastern Prairies, songs which spring from a cattle-rearing economy describe the close relationship between man and his land. With the help of the Grupo Cimarrón and its lead singer Ana Veydó, we tell stories about lands and settlers. In the jungles and prairies of Colombia, the heritage over the fight for land which began 500 years ago is still alive and important. One of the harshest paradoxes of Colombia is that the regions richest in natural resources are the places with the strongest social conflicts and the greatest poverty.

Volume 6. CRY OF THE LAND (Grito de tierra)

In this chapter we explore different kinds of colonization, including that associated with an extractive economy, which has been a feature of our history, since the Colombian state has historically favored the interests of foreign trade over those of the population which lives in the jungles and prairies of the country. The Red Book of the Putumayo, written in the early 20th century, denounced the atrocities committed by the Casa Arana rubber-trading firm during the short-lived rubber boom and caused an enormous scandal in Europe in the 1920´s. We travel to the Putumayo region of Colombia, see how it is today and hear, in the voice of the Nasa indigenous community, stories about colonizers and colonization which reveal that many more chapters could be added to that book.

Volume 7. SONG OF THE MOON (Canción de Luna)

The story begins with a little-known object from the collections of the National Museum, one which leads us to explore the lives of two women from 17th century Colombia whose lives could not have been more different. One led such an impeccable life that her husband wrote a book in praise of her and the other was accused of being a witch because of her knowledge of herbal medicine. The heritage of these two ways of life still exists nowadays and we see that many of the stereotypes about how a woman should behave that existed 3 centuries ago are still in force. These stories are narrated by the songs of María Mulata, accompanied by drums and other traditional instruments.

Volume 8. SONG OF THE FAMILY (La Sonora Parentela)

“In the days of work and the nights of wakefulness, so long as there is a woman, a family will exist”. These words, sung by María Mulata, describe the subject of this chapter. Although it is said that the family is the foundation of society and it has been thought , for centuries, that the Colombian family is governed by strict Catholic values, we have only to look at any home to understand that individual decisions and social changes have left us with an ever greater diversity of family values. This chapter explores how different ideas of the family have evolved in the course of Colombian history and gives a chance to meet a network of women from the Chocó region, women who are family heads and give us a different perspective on what this institution, the basis of society, means today.

‹‹ see videos ››

Volume 9. THE COMMON PEOPLE IN SONG (Pueblo Entonado)

A famous strike by workers in a banana plantation, a 1928 political cartoon by Ricardo Rendón, a piece of graffiti and a fish stew do not seem to have anything in common. But they are all related to the social movements which have changed our society. The songs of a vallenato group from Barrancabermeja tell us stories associated with words which we hear in the news every day, like strikes, protests and marches. Who are the common people of Colombia, the ones who have been called plebeians or the rabble? How has the fear that they will rise up shaped our society? Their power has played a crucial role in many episodes in Colombian history, going right back to day of our Independence.

Volume 10. THE PEOPLE HAVE A PARTY (Parrandón de Pueblo)

Using the language of hip-hop and the street, a group of youngsters from Barrancabermeja link their modern life with that of a personage who lived and campaigned in the first half of the 20th century: Raúl Eduardo Mahecha. His struggle is a living inspiration for all current social movements. We look back at the origins of what is known as the working class and the popular movements that changed the political structure of Colombia.

Volume 11. COLOMBIA ON THE AIR (La Onda Nacional)

¿What lies behind the image of Colombia which has been created by the communications media? ¿What was the country like before the advent of television, when people got together around an apparatus which only emitted a voice? From the Teatro Teusaquillo in Bogotá, the D.J., Fresh, mixes the voices of different figures from the golden age of Colombian radio. Bernardo Hoyos, William and Karen Vinasco, Andrés Nieto and Antonio Casale tell us stories which reveal how the media only show part of the reality of the country. From the very beginning, with the earliest radio programs and films, a distorted version of what Colombians are like was created, full of prejudices and half-truths.

Volume 12. THE SCRATCHED SIDE OF THE RECORD (El Lado Rayado)

In the 1950´s, when President Rojas Pinilla was bringing the T.V. to Colombia, the famous duo of singers, Los Tolimenses, were awarded the “Nemqueteba” prize, whose symbol (like the Oscar) was a little figurine which transmitted the image of a rural country with a peasant population, a still innocent one perhaps for those ran the media. The purpose of television was to be educational and cultural. What relation does current TV have with those aims? In the opinion of many, commercial TV is in a poor way nowadays, suffering from a limited choice of programs, worn-out formats and a minimal representation of the country´s regions. This chapter deals with the history of Colombian television, showing, among other things, soap operas from the 1980´s and an interview with those who work in a present-day community t.v. channel in Bogotá.

Documentary series (in progress)

4 episodes x 52’

Teaser 12 min.

Synopsis

This documentary series follows meetings between Amazonian indigenous peoples and people from other ancient cultures across the world, looking at the exchanges of art and knowledge which emerge. The common point in all the encounters are the tribes of the Amazon, the world’s largest rainforest, who have managed to preserve their culture and traditions despite the arrival of settlers and other threats. The series shows two-way exchanges in which native tribes from Canada, Finland, Africa and Mongolia spend time with the Amazonian communities first in the jungle and then back in their own ancestral lands. The meetings are opportunities to share different experiences and different methods of coexisting with the environment and also to witness at first hand rare and millenarial rituals and customs. At a more superficial level, these are also encounters filled with joy and celebration: images of the pleasure of unexpected encouters which today’s world makes possible. Through the series we meet the leaders at the fore of these meetings in which oral traditions are renewed, sacred sites are recognized and medicinal plants are exchanged. We discover the mystery and power which are latent in such encounters and we see how humans can live in greater harmony with nature.

Treatment

Each chapter centres on one of the leaders of the visiting population, allowing us to discover, through his or her eyes, the surprises and novelties which arise in such a different and far-away context. Each will be divided into two equal parts, chronicling the events during the respective leg of the visit. For example, in one chapter, we might see first the experiences of African indigenous peoples in the Amazon jungle and then those witnessed by Amazonian visitors to the African desert. Among the issues which will be address are the role of ancestral medicines and sacred plants, the importance of preserving ancestral languages, education, the understanding of time and the use ecological calendars, and the need for laws granting the communities greater independence.

Project developed by 4direcciones, The GAIA Foundation and African Biodiversity Network.

Documentary series

26 episodes x 7′ o 13 episodes x 15’

Synopsis

Children who can tell the time by the position of the sun in the sky. Who know what date it is when they look at the stars at night. Who are able to fish and look after the community´s crops. And also read and write in at least two languages. No, they aren´t imaginary, nor are they geniuses. They are children of the indigenous communities of the Colombian Amazon, who, since the 1990´s, after a legal battle against the Catholic Church´s domination of public education in the region, have created a new educational system which emphasizes the teaching of things which are useful to their daily lives and their communities. The protagonists of this series are indigenous children who are teaching children from the cities how they have learned reading, writing, mathematics and many other subjects in this unique alternative system of education, created in the heart of the Amazonian jungles of Colombia.

Treatment

The program is made up of seven-minute segments which show the new educational system for the indigenous children of the Amazon. The contrast between it and the kind of teaching city children receive becomes evident on occasions when the latter visit the jungle communities. Kids from big cities think that fish comes from the supermarket, not the river; are unfamiliar with a range of fruits with exotic names; and are astonished to find that you can learn to count with parrot feathers and the seeds on the ground. The program focuses on the children and teachers who participate in this program of local education, and other adults who are responsible for the curriculum, teaching methods and age groupings. The different segments allow us to see how education transmits a series of intangible but fundamental cultural values and priorities.

Project developed by 4direcciones and The GAIA Amazonas Foundation.

Imagined Cities aims to put into visual form the fantasies of twenty-first century inhabitants of various world cities. Our focus is on a new urbanism: not that of the physical cities which concerns architecture and urban planning, but a citizen’s urbanism which assumes…

Documentary series (fiction)

13 episodes x 30’

Synopsis

Imagined Cities aims to put into visual form the fantasies of twenty-first century inhabitants of various world cities. Our focus is on a new urbanism: not that of the physical cities which concerns architecture and urban planning, but a citizen’s urbanism which assumes that cities are made up of collective imaginations and desires about the present and the past. Through tools such as books, clips, documentaries and perception diagrams, we can access “urban imaginaries”, the imagined cities which coexist with with the real cities, determined by their citizens through their use and evocation. The project looks to paint portraits of a number of cities which point to new ways of being urban within the diversity of the Western world. Urban imaginaries put homogenising globalization to one side, and instead tap into the dynamics of regions and groups, thereby exploring the most private ceremonias and rituals of contemporary cities.

Treatment

This documentary series draws on the exhaustive research of Dr Armando Silva, a renowned semiologist who has specialized in developing a holistic theory about cities, in particular the mutationes which they have undergone in Latin America. The documentaries will be narrated in the first person by several inhabitants of each city (Bogota, Sao Paulo, Caracas, Barcelona, Buenos Aires, Lima, La Paz, Panama City, Santiago, Mexico City, Quito, and Liverpool.) who will explain how they live in their environment. Through Silva’s theoretical work, their stories will be shown to form part of a general pattern which characterizes the present.
Visually, the series will work with a variety of resources, including film archives, magazines, newspapers and family photo albums, as well as traditional resources such as interviews and shots of people in the day-to-day urban activities.

Project developed by 4direcciones, and Imaginarios Urbano Foundation.

Plástica: Contemporary Art in Colombia. This series assumes the challenge of showing, in a way that is simple yet profound, the story of Colombian art since the 1990´s. Its ten chapters cover traditional techniques like painting and drawing, more recent ones like photography and video, and others, like performance…

Documentary series

10 episodes x 24’
2005

Synopsis

With the explosion of new media, techniques and formats, to understand what is happening in the world of contemporary art, be it in Colombia or on an international level, may seem like an impossible task. This series assumes the challenge of showing, in a way that is simple yet profound, the story of Colombian art since the 1990´s. Its ten chapters cover traditional techniques like painting and drawing, more recent ones like photography and video, and others, like performance, which are little known to the general public. Its approach to current developments in all of these fields tries to remove the aura of mystery or remoteness from daily life which some associate with art and show that it is a vital human activity easily understood once some of its basic aspects are explained.

Treatment

Some people regard art as a complicated or boring subject. This documentary is based on the premise that such a view is not true, since it is possible for anyone to enjoy and be enriched by works of art. Entertaining yet serious at the same time, Plástica manages to explore recent developments in Colombian art in a lively and interesting way. The series includes interviews with artists, critics and curators; reports on works in progress; and encounters with the growing public which appreciates and nourishes itself on the achievements of Colombian art.

Project developed by 4direcciones, El Vicio Producciones and The Ministry of Culture of Colombia.

The chapters are structured base don the very important arguments that have shaped recent Colombian art practices, which are ilustrated through art proposals, exhibitions and curatorship projects. They incluye interwies with and dialogs among curators, artist, journalist, managers and the public at large.

Group 1. CHALLENGES AND APROPIATIONSFOR ART PRACTICES IN THE 90´S

1. Art Is a Paper Tigre: Embracing Concuptualism. The affirmation that along with (or beyond) the criticismo f the institution that is art, latin America has appropiated conceptualism to make social and political Tepics public domain. This chapter proposals, ¨The Pedro Manrique Figueroa case¨, and Fernando Escobar´s group Project ¨New Flora and Fauna in Santa Fe de Bogotá¨, among others. Also, it introduces the notion of curator and talks about how conceptial art paves the way to creative curatorship proposals.

2. Art Is Not What It´s Painted to Be: Painting and Drawing, In Colombia painting entered the 90¨s facing two situations: post-modernist criticism and social and comercial circumstance of drug trafficking: This chapter shows post-modernismappropiations and the impacto f the economy and painting circles (creators, gallery, owners, and buyers) as well as the response that some Colombian painters and illustrators had for dealing with the circumstance. It represents the Works of Beatriz González, Delcy Morelos, Johann Calle, and José Antonio Suarez. There is a glance at contemporary drawing through projects Duch as ¨Drawing¨and Ëxpedition to El Dibujo¨. Both invite viewers to understand drawing as an attitude, not as a technique.

3. Objects in Transit: Sculpture and Object Art. The dynamics of globalization and consumption have created publicand private landscapes surrounded by objects. This chapter shows how artists appropriate objects, collect them, take them out of their context, and give them back, reinvented. On a queso for the objects that inspire their Works, Nadín Ospina visits the Flea Market amd Beatriz Gonzaález Pasaje Rivas. It also examines Doris Salcedo´s sculptures and explores the proposals of artists such as Juan Fernando Herrán, María Fernanda Cardoso, and María Elvira Escallón and it presents the household art of Humberto Junca, Andrea Echeverri, and Héctor Buitrago and invites viewers to participate in everyday art by taking an object and changing its function.

Group 2. ART PRACTICES AND NATIONAL STORIES: MEMORY, CITY, AND THE SOCIAL BODY

4. The Conquest of Space: Public Art. This chapter explores the role of art in crating rhetoric for nacional ownership and citizen participation. From public monuments to contemporary art proyects and ¨what is public¨through projects sucha as ¨The Venecia Biennial¨, ¨Ciudad Kennedy: Memory and Reality¨, the Cambalache Group´s ¨The Street Museum¨, as well as the urban interventions made by art students coordinated by Elias Heim.

5. Architecture of the Memory: Installation. This chapter explores that intervene in the territorios of group memory as incomplete, troublesome stories. The 1997 Salón Regional de Bogotá at the La Sabana train station suggested the need to reflect on how we remember our national history. Tha installations of the artists selected in this chapter express recurring artistic themes such as the effectiveness of museums, the construction of a piece created for a specific place, and the importante of art as a place for reflection. It presents Doris Salcedo´s artistic action in 2002 at the Place of Justice, Maria Elvira Escallon´s piece In Vitr, Elias Heim´s Attack, Rodrigo Facundo´s On the Tipo f the Tongue, the Carlos Uribe´s Murmur, and Jaime Avila´s Fourth World.

6. Focuses and Trips: Art and Fotography. This chapter seeks to examine art projects that record cultural paths and constructions in the urban landscape. Photography is an habitual tool for contemporary artists, but its tradicional use has envolved with time. It looks at the forms that photography has taken since the 70s through Fernell Franco´s photographic works of Oscar Muñoz, Jesús Abad Colorado, ando f Gloria Posada in Medellín. It ends with a group exhibition ¨Bogota Voice-Off¨ that gathers recent photographic and non-photographic proposals. The interviews with curators who explain photography´s journey from the 70s to today were done at the Serrano photography studio.

7. What a Body Can Do: Performance. By exploring performance festivals and events , this chapter seeks to Dra. Attention to the use of the body and performance for reminding viewers of cultural and social problems including topics of gender and sexuality. This chapter opens with María Teresa Hincapié´s performance ¨A Thing Is a Thing¨. Researchers, curators, and actors give their versions of definition of performance ando f the diverse concepts of the body that were generated in the 90´s. It takes viewers to the Cali performance festival, then to Barranquilla with Alfonso Suárez and his performance in which he appears as Jose Gregorio Hernández. The trip ende with performances such as María Fernanda Cardoso´s The Flea Circus and Raymond Chávez´s The Creole Touch.

Group 3. INFORMATION, INTERACTIVENESS, AND TECHNOLOGIES.

8. The Subversive image: Video Art. Is video art the guerrilla against TV? How can video image be used to speak the politics, of cultural activism? The chapter gives the opinios of video artist fundamentalist Pilles Charalambos, of TV critic Omar Rincón, and the filmmaker Luis Ospina. The symbolic work here is Wilson Díaz´s ¨A Bath in the Brook¨. The shapter shows pieces of original, complete video art, such as José Alejandro Restrepo´s installation ¨Paradise Muse¨, Clemencia Echeverri´s ¨Family Appetites¨, Catalina Ridriguez´s ¨JKF¨ and ¨Lady D¨. The project ¨Fragments of Long Video¨ illustrates distribution strategies. It presents art and curatorship projects that examine the politics of the image and the use of video in social processes of cultural and political activism.

9. Recycled Technologies: Electronic Art. Information, technology, and the forms of interactiveness inherited have transformed our subjectivity and oponed new spaces of freedom and democratization of information. This chapter speaks of the origins of the web as military technology tool and examines projects that discuss the generalizad idea of technology as a scenario of freedom. It spaeks of net art, web pages, electronic art. Many artists work with or against these new media or use the idea of interactiveness in their projects. The web page ¨Luxuriously Popular¨, Andrés Burbano´s installations or Adriana Garcia´s ¨War Mix¨ emphasize the idea of dialog with viewers from very diverse and opposite perspectives.

Group 4. ART APPROPRIATIONS AND USES

10. Is this Art? Appropriations. This chapter examines how society appropriates art practices and puts them at the service of policies and life projects. By studying projects that broach this topic, it studies the inusual paths that art practices take when they are inserted into social dynamics.

Sounds Good To Me looks to bring to the fore the connections between this new generation and the musical traditions which inspired them. Each chapter brings together one young group with some of the veteran popular musicians who they most admire or who have most influenced them…

Documentary series (musical)

13 episodios x 30’

Synopsis

In recent years, Colombian music has undergone an unprecedented renaissance. Young groups have emerged in various cities, fusing national musical traditions with elements of rock, jazz and electronic music. The results have been musical hybrids as rich as they are difficult to catalogue. This series looks to bring to the fore the connections between this new generation and the musical traditions which inspired them. Each chapter brings together one young group with some of the veteran popular musicians who they most admire or who have most influenced them. The young people’s admiration of their precursors is also the perfect cue to review, through the eyes of musical experts, the careers of these established artists who have marked the history of popular music in Colombia.

Approach

The programmes will have two narrative axes: firstly, the encounters between young groups and the veteran figures of popular music; and secondly, investigations of the careers of these renowned maestros and their current relevance, as seen by leading experts. Among the young groups being considered for the series are Chocquibtown, La 33, Bomba Estéreo, María Mulata, Mojarra Eléctrica, Puerto Candelaria, Humberto Pernett, D.j. Fresh, Colombiafrica Mystic Orchestra, Teto Ocampo, Velo de Osa, Héctor Buitrago and Malalma. And among the established figures are Joe Arroyo, Niche, Lisandro Meza, Diomedes Diaz, Petrona Martínez y Etelvina Maldonado, Gualajo, El Brujo, Jorge Velosa and Noel Petro, ¨El Burro Mocho”.

Project developed by 4direcciones and Polen Records.

Documentary (history)

1 episode x 30’
2003

Hagamos memoria, hagamos las paces

One hundred years after signing its first peace treaty, Colombia is once again beset by armed conflict. However, between the “One Thousand Days War” at the beginning of the 20th century, and the present day hostilities, Colombians have lived in peace for at least half that time. Colombia has a long tradition of negotiating peace treaties, a tradition that has left a great legacy and much to learn concerning political transformation, the process of amnesty, and the social and political assistance necessary to enable all combatants to make the transition to political legitimacy, democracy and civil life.

This documentary is a journey through some of the most significant peace treaties signed in Colombia in the 20th century.