Eco-territorial Cinema: An Intercultural, Translocal, Andexpanded Community Process

This research performs a re-reading of community cinemafor the territorial defense against the extractive intrusion ofmetallic mega-mining in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Based onthe notion of eco-territorial turn, which proposes that we arewitnessing the configuration of a hybrid militancy amongdiverse actors and geographies, we analyze the work of theEtsa-Nantu/Cámara-Shuar audiovisual creation laboratorythat generates works with and from the Shuar indigenouspeople in an intercultural and translocal key. From themultisituated ethnography, the practices of film productionof the collective in the jungle are approached; as well as thepractices of circulation and exhibition in the city. The articleconcludes that the intercultural cooperative logic -whichbrings together indigenous and non-indigenous people- anda translocal dynamic -that connects rural-urban areasvindicates collective, cultural, territorial and selfdetermination rights, as well as the vindication of humanrights and the very new rights of Nature. Thus, it is proposedthat an expanded community has been configured as anemerging political-aesthetic-communicational practice thatis part of the collective action repertoires of eco-territorialdefense networks against the extractive industry.