9 mins., b&w, silent.
Source : CINEMATEK (Royal Film Archives of Belgium) – Marquis de Wavrin DVD collection.
Background – This sequence seems to have formed part of the film that the Marquis de Wavrin made about his travels around Colombia, Chez les Indians Sorciers, when it was first released in Paris in 1934. Unfortunately, however, no copy of this version of the film has apparently survived.
What has survived is a copy of the second version of the film, released in Belgium in 1939. But shortly before this release, a new temperance law had been passed in Belgium, so as secondary burial ceremonies among the Yuko traditionally entailed the consumption of large quantities of maize beer, de Wavrin was obliged to cut this sequence.
Fortunately, however, the sequence is preserved in the Royal Film Archives of Belgium. This sequence has no soundtrack but, equally fortunately, a transcript of the original commentary has also come to light. On the CINEMATEK DVD, a new recording of this commentary script has been superimposed on a restored version of the original sequence.
Content – The sequence begins with preparations for the secondary burial of a child, son of a Yuko chief, who had died some six weeks beforehand. Large quantities of maize beer are prepared and the boy’s mother weaves a cloth in which the bones will be wrapped before being re-buried.
Visitors arrive and dancing continues through day and night to the sound of panpipes played, interestingly, by women. The next morning, as the parents grieve over the grave, which seems to be at some distance from the village, at a pre-arranged signal, a group of male visitors arrive in an aggressive fashion and begin fighting, ransacking the grave.
The voice-over commentary interprets this as an effect of the maize beer, but it is almost certainly a mock performance of aggression on the part of the visitors, which would conform to a pattern that has often been reported as an integral part of rites of passage among indigenous peoples of this region.
Notwithstanding the disruption caused by the visitors, the father carefully wraps the bones in the specially prepared cloth and returns to the village, accompanied by the visitors.
Here dancing continues, along with serious drinking of the maize beer. Fights break out. The commentary claims that a woman was killed, though this assertion should be treated with caution. We see a man squirming on the floor and are invited to think of him as being extremely drunk. However, it could equally be an intense expression of grief.
By next morning, the rage of the previous day has passed and a group of young warriors dance solemnly in a line with their bows and arrows in hand. The sun is still low and the shadow of the cameraman, cranking furiously, falls across the image. At a given moment, the dancers line up and fire their arrows into the earth – ‘defying death’ according to the voice-over commentary.
A few days later, the skeleton of the deceased child is taken in its cotton bag to be buried by the ‘closest male relatives’ (though probably not including the father, if this Yuko ceremony conforms to the local pattern). Traditionally, these bags of bones were buried in an collective ossuary in a cave, but in recent times, as in this film, the bag is buried in the earth, close to the village, seemingly amidst maize plants.
Text : Winter 2017
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