The film “The Colonists”, by Felipe Gálvez, which portrays what happened in Chilean and Argentine Patagonia around the year 1900, has been seen not only in Cannes, where it received an award, but also by some of the descendants of the native peoples who They suffered the rigor of colonization at that time.
It is a film that crudely portrays the violence, not only of Europeans, North Americans and Chileans towards the indigenous people, but also among themselves, in the middle of a landscape that is another protagonist of the film.
Due to its crudeness, some descendants chose not to watch the film. Among those who did do so are He’many Molina, Marcela Comte and Isis Troncoso. They are members of the Selk’nam Covadonga Ona Indigenous Community.
Molina remembers that in 2019 “Felipe Gálvez and Antonia Girardi contacted us through the corporation’s email, expressing the need to communicate with us because they had a project for a film.”
“We met with Felipe and Antonia, they sent us the script and we suggested some things that didn’t seem very good to us and they accepted our suggestions. We are not part of the film, we do not sponsor the film, but we were considered in the opinion. And in fact, they were very afraid of transgressing, of being carried away, of disrespecting, and they wanted to tell from a fiction, a fictional story, but they wanted to show part of reality,” he comments.
On that occasion, the project was presented and voted favorably by the Covagonda Ona community.
“That did not mean giving or removing a permit, but whether or not we were responsible for saying, we agree with what he is doing and we are going to support him. In that sense, the community approved this script and approved the project and we told them, we are not going to be a problem for you because the film does not transgress us, on the contrary, it makes visible such a harsh reality and in a way that at least you had the consideration. to look for us beforehand, to comment on it, to show the script and to listen to our requests for changes.”
Comte highlights that “the film is raw, but it is also real. It was a genocide, and like all genocides, very crude. There is a lot left to show, but the important thing is that it be made visible, that people see it and understand what the people have gone through, not only ours, but all the people in Latin America.”
Isis Troncoso, as a visual artist, found the film very beautiful in relation to photography and also how it portrays the Selknam people “from details that are very significant, for example, when she is peeling potatoes it seems to me that she has a small tool “It is made of stone, and shows certain signs that have to do with our culture, which are things that we are trying to recover, and it is nice to see how that is being integrated into the film.”
It also points to how “the climate, the landscapes of Tierra del Fuego are portrayed. From very subtle elements he talks about how people lived here and I also find it interesting how he works from the perspective of the settler, how in the end different stories are constructed based on political decisions, and in the end he also manages the form. to build history.”