Eldorado XXI
Salomé Lamas
Portugal / F 2016
125 min – HD – Spanisch, Quechua, Aymara
K: Luis
Armando Arteaga –
S: Telmo Churro –
SD: Bruno Oliveira Dias
P: O Som e a Fúria, Shellac Sud
Salomé Lamas’s Eldorado XXI immerses the viewer in the breath-taking views and extreme conditions of La Rinconada in the Peruvian Andes, the highest-elevation permanent human settlement in the world. Here, some 17,000 feet above sea level, miners face misery and lawlessness in the hopes of striking gold, chewing coca leaves to stave off exhaustion. Life in this remote outpost of civilization seems to unfold in the grip of an illusion, and the film itself frequently resembles a hallucination, not least in an extended tour-de-force shot that reveals an endless stream of miners trekking up and down the mountain as we hear radio reports and stories of their daily lives. Full of unforgettable images and sounds, Eldorado XXI is a transporting, fundamentally mysterious experience that renews the possibilities of the ethnographic film. – Museum of Modern Art New York
sunday 9 oct 6.30 p.m. filmmuseum münchen
Salomé Lamas Born in Lisbon, she studied cinema and fine arts both in Portugal and Amsterdam and has exhibited her work widely both in the context of the gallery and the film theater. Rather than conventionally dwelling in the periphery between cinema and the visual arts, fiction and documentary, she has made these languages her own, challenging the lines between genres and modes of exhibition. Salomé’s films are fearless, both in the formal and narrative risks they take, and in their physical performance, as we see her trapped, hanging, falling or in this case, sitting silently behind the camera, in a fertile occupation of a no man’s land.
Films Imperial Girl 2010 – Golden Dawn 2011 – VHS Video Home System 2012 – Terra de Ninguém 2012 (8. UX) – Eldorado XXI 2016