The Metamorphosis of Cine Indigen(ist)a: Memoria viva and the Technological Artist in Multicultural Colombia

Abstract

Since the 1960s, Colombian documentary film-maker Marta Rodríguez has seen a number of interrelated transformations in the spheres of politics, technology and film-making methodology that have affected the ways in which she makes anthropological and political documentaries with indigenous and other minority groups. Centered on a reading of her collaborative documentary video Memoria viva (1992–1993), made with a Nasa indigenous community in Colombia's Cauca department along with the Bolivian filmmaker Iván Sanjinés, this article looks at the ways in which official neo-liberal multiculturalism, technological change and the altering dynamics between indigenous and non-indigenous intellectuals and cultural producers have informed her own attempts to render her political films more democratic and less hierarchical. Rather than denouncing them as contradicting her oppositional political stance, Marta Rodríguez's later attempts to work with the multicultural Colombian state are viewed in terms of Arlindo Machado's notion of ‘technological artist’ as someone who both legitimates and sabotages state interests.