A hundred of us squeezed into La Terre restaurant on Glastonbury High Street to watch the new film from the Kogis. The first film, more than twenty years ago now, was 'The Mamas Warning.' The warning was that if we continue to treat the environment the way that we as a species have been treating it, the world will not last. The warning was not heeded, and the Kogis called director Alan Ereira back to make a new film.
The Kogis have chosen to emerge from their safe but hidden home in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta - near the Caribbean coast of Colombia - in order to deliver their message. They have learnt to understand film technology, and this film has considerable input from them - it is not simply a film about them. Also, it is not just an emotional appeal to 'Little Brother' to wake up; it is an approach to the modern scientific mind. And it is magical, and seems to work on both levels.
For several days after watching 'Aluna' part of me was still was still in the world of the Kogis, living at their pace, walking with their gait, doing my best to see the world with their eyes and their understanding. "You do not have to abandon your lives" they said to us, "but you must look after the rivers."
Since hearing this brief but central part of their message before, I have been taking notice of our local rivers near Glastonbury: the Brue and the Axe, which were severed from each other in the Middle Ages when the Brue was redirected and turned into a canal. I have been walking across the levels and tracing where the missing part of the river used to flow. Now I feel inspired to go to the mouth of the river Axe, and to find there something to take as an offering, to the source of the river Brue.
This is Alan Ereira's summary of the film:
The Kogi once traded with Maya and Aztecs. Their civilization still survives hidden on Colombia's highest mountain. They believe they are guardians of the world. Their leaders are trained from infancy in darkness to work by connecting with 'aluna', a cosmic consciousness. They perceive 'black lines' that connect special sites essential to life. In 1990, convinced that we were destroying the earth, they sent a warning through a British film-maker and then withdrew. They have now concluded that we cannot have grasped the warning and they have to explain it better if the world is to survive. So they recalled the film-maker and instructed him to film their demonstration of these connections, using 400km of gold thread. So begins a truly bizarre journey. We see people who have no wheel or writing, who know nothing of our world, seriously discussing dark energy with a leading astronomer and correctly identifying objects seen by the Hubble telescope. But as the journey gets under way they gradually realize that the film-maker has no idea what they are trying to demonstrate and their own arguments are treated as fantasy by a local biologist. So they change tack, taking us up into their mountain to show exactly what they mean, and then coming down to join forces with leading scientists who recognize that this is important cutting-edge knowledge dealing with a very grave issue. Their journey leads to apocalyptic horror, but in an astonishing resolution ends with an extraordinary joyful celebration of new life.
http://www.alunathemovie.com/en/
The Kogis have chosen to emerge from their safe but hidden home in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta - near the Caribbean coast of Colombia - in order to deliver their message. They have learnt to understand film technology, and this film has considerable input from them - it is not simply a film about them. Also, it is not just an emotional appeal to 'Little Brother' to wake up; it is an approach to the modern scientific mind. And it is magical, and seems to work on both levels.
For several days after watching 'Aluna' part of me was still was still in the world of the Kogis, living at their pace, walking with their gait, doing my best to see the world with their eyes and their understanding. "You do not have to abandon your lives" they said to us, "but you must look after the rivers."
Since hearing this brief but central part of their message before, I have been taking notice of our local rivers near Glastonbury: the Brue and the Axe, which were severed from each other in the Middle Ages when the Brue was redirected and turned into a canal. I have been walking across the levels and tracing where the missing part of the river used to flow. Now I feel inspired to go to the mouth of the river Axe, and to find there something to take as an offering, to the source of the river Brue.
This is Alan Ereira's summary of the film:
The Kogi once traded with Maya and Aztecs. Their civilization still survives hidden on Colombia's highest mountain. They believe they are guardians of the world. Their leaders are trained from infancy in darkness to work by connecting with 'aluna', a cosmic consciousness. They perceive 'black lines' that connect special sites essential to life. In 1990, convinced that we were destroying the earth, they sent a warning through a British film-maker and then withdrew. They have now concluded that we cannot have grasped the warning and they have to explain it better if the world is to survive. So they recalled the film-maker and instructed him to film their demonstration of these connections, using 400km of gold thread. So begins a truly bizarre journey. We see people who have no wheel or writing, who know nothing of our world, seriously discussing dark energy with a leading astronomer and correctly identifying objects seen by the Hubble telescope. But as the journey gets under way they gradually realize that the film-maker has no idea what they are trying to demonstrate and their own arguments are treated as fantasy by a local biologist. So they change tack, taking us up into their mountain to show exactly what they mean, and then coming down to join forces with leading scientists who recognize that this is important cutting-edge knowledge dealing with a very grave issue. Their journey leads to apocalyptic horror, but in an astonishing resolution ends with an extraordinary joyful celebration of new life.
http://www.alunathemovie.com/en/
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