Re-existences. Body, Art and Spirituality in defence of life | Film screening and Q&A

Seminar presentation

• Soraida Chindoy Buesaquillo, Inga indigenous leader
• Solanyi Ordóñez, member of the Tent of Resistance
• Valentina Lomanto-Perdomo, film director & PhD student, LUCSUS
• Torsten Krause. Associate Professor, LUCSUS

This short documentary film narrates the socio-environmental conflict triggered by a large-scale copper mining project aimed at extracting critical minerals for the energy transition from the Andean Amazon. Through Theatre of the Oppressed and the voice of Soraida Chindoy Buesaquillo, indigenous territorial defender, the film narrates the process of the Tent of Resistance in Pueblo Viejo, Mocoa, describing the role of art and spirituality in the defence of life, water and territory against green extractivism.

About the film

This short film was crafted as part of a feminist decolonial research praxis, during a two-year Participatory Action Research (PAR) process and accompanying ethnographic work, developed through collaboration between a doctoral researcher and women territorial defenders in Mocoa, Putumayo. Methodologically, the film forms part of the systematic devolution of research outputs (in the sense proposed by Orlando Fals Borda), presented in formats that are accessible and usable by co-researchers and research participants, and that support the advancement of glocal agendas for social and environmental justice. Far from constituting a final research product, the film should be understood as research material that feeds the continuous cycles of action and reflection that characterise PAR. In this sense, it represents an effort not only to study reality but to actively contribute to its transformation.