Sunday, August 14, 2011

A Visual Timeline of the film

 The young actors of Teatro Trono watch historical footage of the Gas Wars in 2003.
 El Alto leads the protests over the exporting of national gas.  The president flees after 84 die in clashes with the police and military.
 Tintín and the other youth remember these events, and how it formed them,
just as they came of age as revolutionary artists.
 The troupe debates how these events live on, how the current indigenous president, Evo Morales, both represents them more than ever, and had better watch out for their needs, or else...
 Another actor, Maya reflects on the role of their theater in a larger project of liberation
 The youth rehearse, and put the events of 2003 into a larger context of historical oppression.
They  prepare for an upcoming tour in their Theater-Truck.
 The play takes form through their collective creative process..
 They explore their identity as urban youth born of indigenous rural migrants.
Traditional/Western clothes are the symbols they play with...
in Andean identity, cloth is everything.
 The tour quickly approaches, and the youth feel enormous pressure to get it ready in time, and begin to realize the enormity of what they're trying to represent.
 Maya goes home between rehearsals, and helps her mother to cook.
 Maya tells her mother about the play they are rehearsing, and how it's about the creation of El Alto. Her mother tells her why she migrated to El Alto from the countryside.
 Tintín tells his father about their play, and how he will be playing a medicineman.  His father is skeptical about his ability, and quizzes him about his Aymara language skills, and the names of the holy mountains he needs to invoke.
 Animation: the sacred mountains are personified, the apus.  One, a cholita, lifts her skirts, and from beneath emerge miners, who walk to the edge of the Altiplano above La Paz. There, they noisily build a city, El Alto, and out of the rubble from the construction a tall, colorful, recycled building emerges... Teatro Trono
 Teatro Trono
 At the top of Teatro Trono's building, Iván, the director of the organization, 
writes dialogue for the youth's play
 Iván thinks on the building's roof, overlooking El Alto and the mountains.
 Iván describes the deeper social causes of the 2003 rebellion, the discontent at inequality that eventually exploded.
 The troupe continues rehearsing, but also can't stop messing around,
their youthful energy distracting them constantly.
 Iván scolds them, trying to get them back on track.
 They do their best to incarnate those who died in the revolt...
 ... and using cardboard they project their images of the icons of the popular classes that revolted.
 They develop their characters, these iconic figures, such as the Cholita, using projections of themselves with whom they improvise interactions.
 Figure... projection... shadow... their identities multiply.
 The troupe is invited to do a public performance in La Paz, representing 
the coup d'etat that caused the last dictatorship. They travel down from frigid El Alto.
 They perform without warning during a commemorative ceremony,
acting as thugs and the union leaders that were assassinated in 1980.
 Their demand is to declassify the secret military files
that hide the identities of the perpetrators of crimes against humanity...
 This protest is taken to the national military headquarters. The files about the Gas Wars are also classified... their declassification would begin the process of justice for the 84 who were shot dead.
The youth continue the protest with a spectacular march through La Paz.