Saturday, January 26, 2008

An Outsider Needs Bearings


There is a most unforgettable shot about ten minutes into Cocalero, one of last year's Sundance documentaries obstensibly about the election of Bolivia's Evo Morales, said to be the first indigenous person to be the President of that country. He seems like he is going to be late for his own rally of somewhere around 80-100,000 people. The camera dodges and weaves as he does through the edges of the crowd and you feel the excitement building. After what seems coming close to the podium. There is a cut to a wide shot showing the scope of the crowd. We look forward to seeing him speak in a public setting and CUT to Morales getting his haircut, presumably the same day. The shot is first 2.5 minutes of the below embedded YouTube clip (the entrie feature is on You Tube in ten installments-- It's up to you if you want to catch the haircut and the beginning of the film's first union meeting segment of women coca plant workers which does not feature Evo)


Cocalero is less a complete nonfiction film than a collection of some sometimes very engaging footage that is more an all-access video photo essay of this intriguing and sometimes disturbing political phenom. Bolivian politics and the politics of Evo Morales needs the Frontline approach for us northern folk. Afterwards, I felt duped like I did in college where one of my floormates asked me to the movies, only later to find out that it was sponsored by the Jesus Club or the Marxist Student Union. Watching it alone on DVD, I had no friends to counter my post-screening frustration with, so I went to the Internet and found that critics from the NY Times and Variety both noted the incomplete nature of the expereince. At one point, I said to myself, they could show me just about anything here and how am I to digest it, I who know next to damn nothing about the political, social or economic scene of Bolivia, truly a country a world a part from my world of ubiquitous strip malls.

There is one other scene I will never forget in Cocalero where native peasant women, many who don't write or read, are practicing to learn how to vote correctly. Not necessarily just how to vote for Morales, but how to mark the ballot correctly so that their vote will count. As I said, it is a world away.
posted by well-executed buffet at 12:47 AM
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