film treatment

Against the astonishing backdrop of Angel Falls, the highest waterfall on earth, THE MAKING OF A CHIEF brings us into the mysterious world of the Kamarakoto people of the Pemón Nation, in the Venezuelan Amazon. The spectacular vista of the Kamarata Valley spreads before us, vast and remote, accessible only by foot, canoe or small airplane. Mammoth, prehistoric mesas, tepuys, command the landscape. Eroded by millennia of gushing water, their craggy cliffs are sculpted into caves, crevasses and canyons that overflow with countless waterfalls, some of which appear and disappear daily depending on the rainfall.  Carnivorous plants, orchids and bromeliads abound, as do infinite varieties of birds with their myriad songs and warbling, while the rivers run with ruby-red waters. The sheer intensity of the landscape and the fierce power of torrential storms that suddenly explode, and as rapidly vanish, stir in us a heightened awakening to the forces of nature that have shaped both the earth and the people of this exotic land.

To exist here, a reciprocal and humble relationship to the earth evolves in every human activity. No action, no matter how common or routine, goes unnoticed or is bereft of natural or atmospheric consequences. We see this continually acted out by the Kamarakoto, who believe that right behavior stimulates immediate beneficial reactions from nature, while incorrect behavior elicits immediate harmful reciprocity, such as great storms, sickness and even death among members of the community. Therefore, permission is dutifully asked of the natural spirits and respectful habitual rituals characterize the very foundation of daily life within the members of this community.

All this we are witnessing through the visionary eyes of a young and energetic chief, Hortensia Berti, who understands, conceptually and in her heart, that her people and their land are one. The film is structured as Hortensia’s  “letter to the world”, as well as to her tribe.  Hortensia’s clear and straightforward narration leads us through the intricate terrain of Kamarakoto land and daily life.  With unswerving effort, she undertakes the great work of weaving the tapestry of the history and culture of her people, which, until now, has never been written or recorded. 

In the opening sequence of the film, we pan across a spectacular savannah bordered by tepuys, as we listen to Hortensia tell one of the Kamarakoto myths of origin. “The tepuys are houses,” she says. “They are the houses of the spirits, the Imabarí.” We accompany Hortensia as she treads along an upward winding path, sings to the glistening pool at the mouth of a cave asking permission to enter, then swims upstream into the open rock jaws of the cave. A shaft of sunbeam from an opening in the rock high above lets in a thundering waterfall and illuminates the black shimmering walls that look like the carved faces of sentinel giants. Still today the Kamarakoto are weary of these porous tepuy caves, because they believe it was inside of them that the ancient shamans, piasán, in Pemón language, did their work.  The piasán would summon the Imabarí and embody their supernatural powers; then they would fly up through the high cave openings, invisible to the world. “Some piasán were healers”, Hortensia tells us, and continues on to deliver one of the most zealously guarded secrets of the Pemón magical lore -one that appears even in current anthropological studies as a great enigma: “Others were Kanaima.” So we learn that the fabled Pemón Kanaima are “piasán who kill people”, and we hear Hortensia describe the symptoms of a Kanaima attack, and the slow death of its victim. There are, still today, instances of Kanaima activity within the Kamarakoto communities. ”They do it for vengeance or to protect others”, Hortensia explains. “There was a time when every family had its own Kanaima”, for protection”, she says as she looks up to the high opening in the cave.

We move then to a high point looking out over the wide valley bordered by the mighty tepuys in the horizon, perhaps in the exact place where her great-grandfather, legendary Pemón Chief Alejo Calcaño, stood almost a century before. We are witnessing a fundamental moment, never shared with an outsider and certainly never before captured on film: Empowered with the heightened sensibility of the pilgrimage to the caverns of the Imabarí spirits of her people, Chief Hortensia channels the vision of her great-grandfather. His legacy is both her own and that of her tribe, the Kamarakoto. In her clear voice, over the images of the wide and sublime valley, we hear that he was the first Pemón ever to be educated by a white man, the first to leave the Pemón territory, learn Spanish and receive a Western name.  He returned to his people with the awareness that this land and culture were in immediate danger and must be safeguarded from the encroaching “civilization”. Calcaño faced a riddle: how to impart to his people the knowledge he had acquired while at the same time maintain their traditions and culture intact.  He understood the magnitude of his challenge, but he saw clearly what he had to do.

The Kamarakoto believe Calcaño left a series of tenets that have never been written down but are kept in the memories of the elders. They also believe that the Chief predicted a time when the passing down of those tenets to the younger generations would occur. Standing in the place where he once stood, Hortensia gets the clear glimpse that there is no time left; that the elders, Calcaño’s contemporaries, those who lived before the changes began, are passing away. Therefore, the time is now, and, because of her awareness, it is up to her to take up the challenge.

In the following sequences we see Hortensia as a young woman of today’s global world. One by one, we watch a series of small airplanes land on a dirt strip.  We watch and hear tourists from all over the world descend with their knapsacks and trekking gear.  They come to stay in a compound owned by the Kamarakoto community, Kavak Yeutá lodge, a grouping of churuatas -thatched roofed, round mud huts- at the foot of Auyantepuy the mountain (250 sq. miles at the top) that houses Angel Falls, the tallest waterfall on earth.  Hortensia greets them and they engage in conversation.  Hortensia answers their questions about the land and the customs of her people; they show her books and articles from international magazines. Hortensia has come to have access to the documentations of the white explorers who, in the mid 20th Century, “discovered”, photographed and wrote about the existence of Angel Falls (3,458 ft tall,considered “The 8th Wonder” of the world), most of which have remained till now tucked away in museums and libraries of the western cities and universities

Seeking solitude, we watch Hortensia pour over books, magazines and loose photographs as she threads a simple version of the history of the explorations: it was 1933 when North American bush pilot Jimmie Angel flew his cloth airplane into a secluded canyon at the heart of Auyantepuy and “discovered” Angel Falls for the western world. The waterfall is an important icon of Kamarakoto lore and mythology, known to them as Churún-Vená. The canyon, the Churún, is considered to be the home of powerful and malevolent spirits. Perhaps, Hortensia deduces, this is why in Jimmie Angel’s tales, it is referred to as Devil’s Canyon.  Angel’s “discovery” in his small airplane gained the attention of the international community. This initiated a series of expeditions into the monolithic Auyantepuy, which was widely headlined as “The Lost World” made famous in the late 19th century by Arthur Conan Doyle.

A photo album in hand, Hortensia visits a family of close friends who live in a churuata in the Kavak area.  In an intimate scene, she shows them the photos American photojournalist Ruth Robertson shot of the Kamarakoto during her stay in the valley in 1949 (today archived at the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas) Young and old revel and laugh, marveling at the unexpected surprise of the photographs of their parents, grandparents, friends and relatives. Robertson was in the valley while preparing her historic canoe expedition to the base of the falls.  It was the first successful expedition to reach the inside of the Churún, and Robertson achieved her dream to measure the falls.

We follow Hortensia Berti across savannahs and rivers under the blazing Amazon sun and endure the sudden torrential rains as she interviews her people and gathers information. We listen to the stories told by the elders she visits in the mud hut enclaves bordering the jungle. Each trek and each interview delivers revelatory moments and memories come to life in her native tongue, the Pemón language. Hortensia asks and listens, in awe and shared laughter, curious, alert, questioning, sometimes challenging the elders’ accounts and reminiscences, looking for the relevant fragments that will help her piece the great puzzle that forms her culture.

Hortensia sits in the back of a clunky Land Rover on the way to the little enclave of two huts that make up the abode of her grandfather Emilio Manrique and his family; the majestic Ayantepuy mountain commands the background. Grandfather Manrique is nearing 100 years old, and is still lucid. He was Chief Calcaño’s son-in-in law and his aide-de-camp; he tells Hortensia of the chief’s -her great Grandfather’- beginnings and maturing, as he heard them firsthand. Alejo Calcaño was born in the Kamarata Valley (circa 1914). At 12 years old he was chosen and taken out of the jungle by Alejandro Escobar, a prospector and ex-general of the Venezuelan Army. The boy accompanied his mentor on extensive travels along the southern regions of Venezuela, where he learned the ins and outs of the rubber, gold and diamond mining industries. During this part of the Hortensia’s interview, we cut away to vintage footage and photographs of life in the border towns and mining clusters of southwestern Venezuela. Manrique tells that Escobar and young Calcaño stayed at mining camps and security outposts along the borders of Brazil and British Guyana, where the boy became accustomed to living in western societies and began to learn about army regulations and land organizational structure. His mentor oversaw his studies, taught him what he would refer to as “being his own man”. But the boy kept his own point of view, and he experienced first hand the avaricious ways of the foreigners with their greed for land and its resources. It was with great sadness that he witnessed the destruction of what was for him a sacred landscape.

Though he was still very young, the security guards, army servicemen and businessmen that Calcaño encountered along his travels treated him with respect, and encouraged him to become the future chief of the Pemón Nation. He was given his Spanish name, the surname Alejo, short for Alejandro, like his mentor Alejandro Escobar.  His last name came from a great Venezuelan composer, Jose Antonio Calcaño, a friend of Escobar’s. Thus was Calcaño’s ‘baptism’ into the white world.

When, upon Escobar’s sudden death, Calcaño returned to the Kamarata valley in his mid twenties, he had the sudden realization that he was the only Pemón who could communicate with the “outside world”; the only one who understood the threats their land and culture confronted; and the only one who recognized the impending need they had to learn to negotiate and permeate the “outside world”. We see early  photos of the Kamarakoto from the 1930’s; men fishing, hunting, wearing bark loincloths, and bare-breasted women caring for their young. It was then that Calcaño grasped the great task before him: to begin the process of educating his people, while at the same time closing the borders of the Pemón Nation to the outside world until a whole generation was ready and capable to withstand a civilization poised to encroach upon them. He assumed the challenge: he became the first Capitán General, the first great Chief of all the Pemón Nation, which includes the Kamarakoto, Arekuna and Tarepaune. We see a commanding portrait of young Calcaño, bare-chested and wearing a necklace with feathers and a jaguar tooth (the only existing photograph of him as a young man).  We see aerial images, vintage and current, of the wide and stunning Pemón territory, as well as the mining scars on the earth.

As told by grandfather Manrique, the story of Calcaño's mission begins to emerge and be recorded, both for the first time. The Chief’s most difficult decision was to convince the heads of families who lived in clusters of mud-huts bordering the jungle that they must have a central location where the children could attend the school brought in by Catholic missionaries. We see recent footage of the children walking to the school building early morning. Manrique tells Hortensia, the Kamarakoto reluctantly began to build their homes near the school, and the town of Kamarata, the first town in the valley, was born.  In this part of the documentary, we see contemporary footage of the town of Kamarata, where, at the insistence of the Catholic missionaries, the indigenous architecture of mud and thatched roofs was replaced by cinder block houses; although today it is inevitably intercepted by the “intrusion” of the indigenous churuatas.

At about the same time as Calcaño was returning to the Kamarata Valley , Venezuela’s dictator for 30 years, General Juán Vicente Gómez, died, in December of 1935, and was succeeded as president of the country by General Elelazar López Contreras.  According to Manrique, very soon after López Contreras took power, he sent for Alejo Calcaño to go to Caracas and meet with his people. Manrique accompanied Calcaño in his long trip by foot and canoe to Ciudad Bolívar, nearest city to Kamarata.  We see vintage images of the historic Ciudad Bolívar, as well as recent footage.  Calcaño and Manrique were met by officials and given a house to stay.  A series of meetings took place where Calacaño and the Venezuelan officials defined the Pemón territory as well as the border of the Kamarakoto, Tarepaune and Arekuna lands within the whole.  Calcaño continued his trip to Caracas by airplane and Manrique returned to the valley.  We see vintage footage of Caracas and of president General López Contreras. Then we are back with Manrique and Hortensia in the valley, where he tells her that Calcaño was officially named the “Capitán” (chief) of all of the Pemón, by the Venezuelan government, and that the demarcation of lands of the Pemón, as had been agreed upon in Ciudad Bolívar, was made official.

Hortensia brings up the subject of Jimmie Angel to Manrique. It is an unforgettable moment to watch Manrique remember the story, as well as have the rare opportunity to tell of the friendship that evolved between young chief Calcaño and the maverick American pilot; for they became unlikely traveling companions. We see photographs of Jimmie Angel, his airplanes and the camps he set up with tents in the valley. Calcaño’s trips in Angel’s craft allowed him to set up posts and name representatives strategically in the Tarepaune and Arekuna border communities (which are scattered throughout 92,000 square miles of southern Venezuela) to ensure that his policy of the closing of the borders to foreigners remained in place. Since, like the Kamarakoto, the Arekuna and Tarepaune did not speak Spanish, Calcaño would leave large boards with written messages to be shown to the foreigners that read: “you cannot stay here”, “we do no sell our land”, etc. There was yet another great benefit which Manrique chuckles remembering:  Angel’s airplane would always return completely full of everything the Kamarakoto needed -food, knifes, machetes, etc.

Although Manrique remembers the era and Calcaño’s interaction with Jimmie Angel and the other explorers, Hortensia is keenly aware that still today he does not understand the reasoning behind those expeditions or Calcaño’s interest in them, particularly Ruth Robertson’s, which demanded actions from the Kamarakoto that went against their mythological beliefs. Calcaño commanded his men to guide and carry equipment for the expedition to the base of falls, inside the mythical Churún canyon, all of which we see recorded in Robertson’s photographs from ‘49. Hortensia, and therefore we, become the first to hear these stories and concerns, of a time when there was no one but Calcaño to understand and to try to negotiate those events.  This, Hortensia and Marnique’s, is a historical interchange that could not have existed before this very moment the camera is capturing, between the unadulterated mind of an elder and an informed, 21st century young Kamarakoto. So many of the tribe’s mythical beliefs have been forgotten.  Here is Manrique, still lucid, having witnessed the battle of wills between the Kamarakoto and their young chief.  Manrique discloses a secret very few still know: the Kamarakoto did not want to enter the Churún canyon because that is where the Kanaimas (the “piasán who kill”, or black magicians) went for days of cleansing after their drug-induced, out-of-body killing sprees. To the Kamarakoto, the Churún was inhabited by malevolent spirits. But Calcaño didn’t flinch. He understood the importance of Robertson’s expedition, which made history and proclaimed the falls the tallest in the world. When Hortensia shows her grandfather Robertson’s book “Churún-Merú, the Tallest Angel”, the old man is delighted to recognize the faces from the past, his peers, friends and relations, as well as the historical moment, all captured in the images. Hortensia reads to him the names in the captions, and he echoes them, but his expression betrays the perplexity of one who still cannot capture meaning in what he sees.

As the movie progresses, Hortensia immerses herself ever more deeply in her realization. At a table in a mud hut, we find her seated in front of a laptop computer, a new tool she has just acquired for the making of this film, concentrating on the meticulous translation from Pemón to Spanish from one of the filmed interviews. Her fingers move with agility over the keyboard, articulating the translations into a microphone, comfortable in her role as ambassador of the Kamarakoto. And the pace of her discoveries quickens even as her mission becomes clearer, archiving and de-mystifying secrets and a history never before told.

The next trip takes us to the home of Hortensia’s own mother: a cinder block house in the town of Kamarata. She finds her mother sitting in a hammock, stringing beads, in the roofed patio behind the house that serves as open-fire kitchen. Hortensia’s own two children play with friends in the dusty yard; chickens yaw and peck the earth, a rooster caws intermittent. Delia, daughter of Manrique and Calcaño’s firstborn, Alejandrina, grew up in the Chief’s household.  In a calm and focused monologue, Delia delivers a stream of fond and frightening memories, intimate recollections of the Chief’s daily habits and states of mind, as well as the rituals of his household of five wives, of which Delia’s own grandmother was number one. The chief would leave for long periods of time. He would reappear months later wearing white man’s clothes, a rifle and brief case in hand.  This proved terrifying for young Delia, since he personified the very kind of entity he himself had taught them to fear: the foreigner. The entire household quaked at the prospect that this transition might have become permanent. Still, she tells Hortensia, Calcaño woke up every morning at three a.m. and for three consecutive hours sang the most occult of all Pemón songs, the Marik, the knowledge and practice of which have almost disappeared from the collective memory of the Kamarakoto. Mariks were songs reserved for the piasán because of their powerful magical powers and the dangerous consequences of their misuse. Immediately the question arises in Hortensia’s mind: was Calcaño then not only a chief but also a piasán?

The next step in the process is clear: Hortensia now must seek out the one man most knowledgeable in Pemón music for some answers. To reach him she makes an arduous journey in the back of the run-down 4x4 pick-up truck across flooded savannas. She approaches the three-hut compound to find him lounging in a hammock staring out at the vast landscape of the wet savanna towered by Auyantepuy. Hortensia sits at his side. His name is Gregorio Cardona. Around him, children play and do their homework; women make cachiri, the ubiquitous, spit fermented manioc beer, in the open-fire outdoor kitchen; and Cardona’s wife, María Henriqueta, sits silently inside one of the huts weaving delicate patterns into one of her famed hammocks.  To Hortensia’s questions about traditional music, Cardona responds with intricate classifications of social and popular music and instruments, then lists the songs reserved for the piasán because of their magical powers. The Mariks, Cardona confirms, arouse powerful forces; in fact, the Pemón belief is that by singing the Mariks they have the power to maintain the harmony of the planet. Thus, if a particular species is dwindling, they sing a specific Marik to help its propagation; if it is overpopulating, they sing a different Marik to keep it in check. There are also incantations called Tarenes (singular Tarén), which are whispered songs that act like talismans. They protect against misfortunes and are sung to heal the sick. Listening to the wealth of information provided by the wise Cardona, Hortensia begins to grasp for the first time that the Pemón culture is encoded in its music. She gets a glimpse of her ancestors’ view of the universe: behavior is directly related to the natural world around them.  Any action, no matter how small or mundane, reverberates in a kind of rippled pattern and returns to it originator in the form of a physical result.  A mother-to-be, for example, particularly a first-timer, should make sure to act without hesitation -whether crossing a doorway or getting up to wash the dishes- lest her child hesitate at the moment of birth; or, if she leaves her blanket crumpled in her hammock when she gets up in the morning, she might find it difficult for her placenta to come out of her womb after the birth of her baby. Incorrect behavior eventually elicits the help of a piasán to sing the appropriate healing Tarén. But, Cardona admonishes Hortensia, “you must be watchful of the piasán as well as of the Imabarís, for some piasán are just as hungry for the spirits of others, particularly of innocent children.” When Hortensia asks Cardona to sing a Marik for her, he declines, reminding her that he is not trained as a piasán. But he directs her to another who is, Camila, the daughter of the most legendary Kamarakoto piasán.

We find Camila weaving a hammock in her hut in the Kamarata village. She is not pleased by the intrusion and it takes Hortensia some diplomacy to get her cooperation. Once convinced, Camila expresses her delight at having someone wish to hear of her knowledge.  The Marik, she says, must be sung in all four parts, beginning to end. Anyone who does not listen to all the verses stands a chance of becoming critically or even fatally ill, since the piasán must summon the Imabarí to take the listener’s spirit to a journey flying over tepuys and under the rivers, in search of the desired result. The song left unfinished might leave the spirit of the listener away from his or her body in a faraway place, and sickness would ensue. Camila takes up the waronga, a hollow bamboo stick about 5 feet high, ornamented with hanging wild boar dewclaws. Rhythmically, she taps the instrument on the hard-packed dirt floor and begins to chant to the clacking of the claws. The song is incorporated beginning to end within the film, uninterrupted: because the caution is taken seriously. We watch Camila sing, we hear the song, and we are taken on a faraway journey.  Our eyes follow the elated journey of the Imabarís, flying over tepuys and gliding under the red waters of the rivers.

Everyday routines and common objects are considered important to the Kamarakoto community: every meal, every chore, every household custom. But many of these everyday things are slowly disappearing as well because the elders no longer communicate to the youngsters who are more interested in modern things. So when Hortensia visits Claudia Sandoval, we find the eldest member of the tribe, reportedly 114 years old at the time, it is because she is the only person who can recount the ancient tribal distaff rituals, chores, arts and crafts, many of which, like pottery, have fallen into disuse. An artifact herself, frail and wrinkled but with joyful bright eyes, she is cradled in her hammock and, while spinning cotton balls into thread on a traditional hand-held spindle, she speaks articulately in her native tongue. “Don’t come to me for stories.” she says. “When I was a child we were told stories all the time. It was the way children were put to sleep. Today, no one tells stories anymore. I don’t remember anything.” But what she can recount is that she spent most of her life in a very remote cluster of huts, far even from their own civilization and she vividly recalls her fear of the white men who would come and take everything away from them. She also remembers the first airplane that flew over the valley: Jimmie Angel’s plane. She recalls she was wearing the traditional garb, a small apron made of strings of beads tied around her hips. She felt embarrassed at her nakedness and searched quickly for a blanket to cover herself, then hid in the bushes praying to the gods that the plane would crash. After some careful questions, more details of Kamarakoto arts, life and customs do get spoken of, such as the particular form of pottery, of the sort which the women in her household are the last to know how to create.
 
Hortensia, herself often astonished at the amount of details and depth contained in the canon and customs of her people, that have gone until now untold even to her, has found both her mission and her obligation to be a vast enterprise. Other interviews produce often funny, sometimes ominous sensations for her. When the men of the village fish for striped fish they paint their bodies with stripes; when the fish they hunt have rings they paint their bodies with circles. No Pemón will ever throw a stone into a river or wash a dish with picante in its waters for it may irritate the spirits and provoke floods or storms. If a woman eats parrot during pregnancy her child might turn out a chatterbox. For making their ceramic pots the Kamarakoto take clay from only one place in the entire valley, careful to make offerings and ask for permission to dig; and never, under any circumstance, do they look back once they depart the site.

All these and a plethora of other discoveries fill THE MAKING OF A CHIEF from beginning to end. But of all the interviews, all the traditional meals of buttery and meaty hearts of palm worms, spicy ant and termite picante, slivers of monkey meat, and the favorite of all the treats, blanched grasshoppers, which are washed down with glass after glass of cachiri,onecannot be overlooked: that which transpires with Alejo Calcaño’s son, Antonio José Calcaño. Trained and bred by his father to deliver the Great Knowledge when the right time arrived, his disillusionment is profound because that moment, postulated as his father as a true destiny, has, to his view, never come to pass. His life, therefore, feels barren; he has chosen to live in the white man’s world, far away from the Pemón ways and his own Kamarakoto roots. He has traveled with the difficulties brought by advanced diabetes, back home, to meet with Hortensia, with great reluctance but out of respect, for she too is now a promising chief and held in high regard. His only eagerness is to express his disillusionment with the empty dogmas that have always haunted his existence. Hortensia challenges him in front of the camera: “Do you not see that ours is the generation that your father predicted? We are that educated generation, and I, as a delegate of our people, am asking you to pass the knowledge and understanding to us.” Antonio José Calcaño is startled by her words and confidence. He finds no arguments and feels obliged to acknowledge the possibility; promises to consider ways in which to do his part. But as we leave him, his is till mired in doubt and suspicion.

Looking out from one of the many spectacular high points of the valley, Hortensia’s mind is at work, contemplating, fitting together, and deducing much of what she has learned in her search.  She knows now that she will not find the numbered list of tenets that her people believed Calcaño had left behind; neither will she find the one person who will pass the Great Knowledge down.

But the journey itself has revived much along its path. Hortensia understands how she, as well as her people, had become used to the belief that anything of value was somewhere “outside”.  Now they are realizing their customs and traditions have great value, not just to themselves, but to those who visit the valley and make the treks to Angel Falls and to the tops of the famed tepuys, from all over the world. Young Kamarakoto are seeking and learning the old songs and instruments; descendants in many households are asking their grandparents to tell their stories; and the elders are honored to have the young as well as visitors elicit their ancestral knowledge. Hortensia remembers a Japanese documentarist who recently interviewed her for a film.  She thought carefully before she answered his question: which of their species was most endangered.  “Our culture”, she answered, “because our traditions take care of the rest.” 

Back in the thatched roofed dining area of the Kavak lodge we see her working at an improvised sound studio, while other Kamarakoto gather around her to witness -solemnly curious and in awe.  A battery-operated system -a laptop, a professional microphone and editing software - allows her to record her own voice-over onto one of the early sequences of the film.  We watch the film recount itself -except, this time, Hortensia and her fellow Kamarakoto are not just the subjects but also the participants in the making of it. 

The above treatment for this film is shaped from the research done to date.  This storyline will be inter-cut with interviews of scholars and personalities related to the historical material of the 20th Century explorers and events in Venezuelan history, thereby adding a scholarly layer to the film.  Also, the inter-cutting will contain present time interviews with Hortensia Berti herself and other Kamarakoto personalities. This will give the storyline an interesting overlay, meant to elucidate the effects that the making of this film has produced in the lives of its protagonists, the Kamarakoto people.