Self
Facing the consequences of a violent uprooting, Mateo Sobode Chiqueno has been recording stories, songs, and testimonies of his Ayoreo people since the seventies. In an attempt to preserve fragments of a disappearing culture, Mateo walks across communities in the arid and desolate Paraguayan Chaco region, and registers on cassettes the experiences of other Ayoreo who, like him, were born in the vast forest, free and nomadic, without any contact with white civilization, until religious missionaries forced them to abandon their ancestral territory, their means of subsistence, their beliefs and their home.
Director
For Ayoreo peoples in the Gran Chaco of northern Paraguay, the terms of survival are by no means clear. In this unprecedented experimental film, Ayoreo elder Mateo Sobode visually explores present-day life on an evangelical mission. In doing so, the filmmaker creates a visionary cinematic reflection on how to affirm Ayoreo life in the face of dispossession and social upheaval. This film is one part of the four-part series Yocoredie: the Ayoreo Video Project.
