Yarokamena

This is the story of YAROKAMENA, a Uitoto indigenous person who organized armed resistance to rubber exploitation at the beginning of the 20th century in Casa Arana, Colombia. He invokes the spiritual and cosmic forces of war, releasing its destructive power from its container that ends up creating a spiral of betrayal and death.
This remarkable tale was banned by traditional authorities for its potential to attract young people to revolt and function as a stimulus to resort to witchcraft. It is here told by Gerardo Sueche, councilor of the Uitoto peoples, going through film portraits of a delirious Amazon, invaded by technological ruins, dysfunctional antennas, ghost ships, and colonial ghosts housed in the oral memory of the survivors of this episode of exploitation and extractivism. Cinema is a new container for this destructive force.

Andrés Jurado is an artist, filmmaker, and producer whose work explores the intersections between experimental and expanded cinema, archives, counter archive, contemporary art, propaganda, mosquitoes, aliens, the space race, and the incidences of those in the construction of contemporary narratives and politics. His works have been presented at Docs Buenos Aires, MIDBO Bogotá International Documentary Festival, and EMAF, among others. He is co-founder and co-director of the Laboratory of Experimental Cinema and Expanded Theater La Vulcanizadora. In 2021, he was part of the Forensic Architecture Team in the investigation into land dispossession, disappearance, and deforestation in Colombia.

Production Maria Alejandra Rojas Arias, Ansgar Schaefer. Production companies La Vulcanizadora (Bogotá, Colombia), Kintop (Lissabon, Portugal). Director Andrés Jurado. Cinematography Andrés Jurado. Editing Andrés Jurado. Music Jitoma Safiama. Sound design Julian Galay. DirectSound Andrés Jurado, Maria Alejandra Rojas Arias. Production design Maria Alejandra Rojas Arias. Assistant director Vitilio Iyokina Gittoma. With Gerardo Sueche Cañube (Narrator).

Films

selection: 2001: Light Hurts (20 min.). 2007: Edition & Sacrifice (7 min.). 2008: Operaciones Especiales I & II (10 min). 2009: 2:48 Minutos con la Puerta (3 min.), Ficción Solar (installation, 10 min.). 2010: Special Operations (10 min.). 2011: 2:48 minutes with the door (3 min.), Underwater Lullaby (9 min.). 2015: Despropaganda. Do not cut tails or heads. Expanded Cinema. 2016: VerdeLaNoche (9 min.). 2019: Fú (with Maria Rojas, 9 min.), Peregrinación a la Luna (film installation, 30 min.). 2020: The Rebirth of the Carare (21 min.). 2022: Yarokamena.