Monographic Show KIRO RUSSO

IFFI #34

Exploring Boundaries: The experimental documentary expeditions of Bolivian filmmaker Kiro Russo into the depths of history

When Elder’s father dies, his family decides to get rid of the good-for-nothing drunkard. All of a sudden, the young man finds himself among miners, and shots of a nocturnal Andean landscape give way to a frenzied, abstract mechanical montage. Men with headlamps bore holes in the dark, hammers clatter into rock, and coca leaves are chewed in between. Made with the help of local indigenous workers in the Bolivian mining settlement of Huanuni, VIEJO CALAVERA (DARK SKULL) depicts the harsh everyday struggle for survival in and on the mountain, telling, in an ecstatically associative fashion, the story of someone who constantly gets in the way. In 2016, this feature-length debut saw the light of the silver screen at the Locarno Film Festival. It went on to air at more than 80 other film festivals and won numerous awards. And so, the international cinema community took note of Kiro Russo. It then took five years for the Bolivian writer-director to follow up with EL GRAN MOVIMIENTO (THE GREAT MOVEMENT), which won the Special Orizzonti Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival. It shows another chapter in the life of Elder, who is still struggling, and not just with alcoholism: This time, Elder has travelled to La Paz with other miners to protest against the loss of his job. In order to make ends meet while he is there, he tries his hand at a menial market job. When he develops symptoms of a strange illness, a kind-hearted old woman, who believes Elder is her godson, is convinced that she knows who can cure him: a quite peculiar loner who may be a shaman. All sorts of strange and surprising things begin to happen when Russo does what he seems to prefer: straddling the boundary between documentary and fiction.

Kiro Russo draws material from reality, from what he finds and what is raw and unhewn. Resorting to dramaturgical and aesthetic means of cinematic art, he adds to found material to create a narrative that is both aware of history and its legends and partial to taking a mystical and mythical turn. Latin America’s past, with its ethnic and socio-political upheavals, forms the basis of Russo’s work and gives his films their multi-layered readability. In the 2015 colonial history miniature LA BESTIA (THE BEAST), for example, an indigenous man hurries over hill and dale in the Andes and eventually encounters a horse. There isn’t much going on besides the stunning landscape and the magnificent black and white – one might think. An insert at the beginning, however, hints at the scene being placed in the Imperio Incaico in the first half of the 16th century – the time when Francisco Pizarro of Spain subjugated the Incas and occupied the territory of present-day Bolivia, declaring it part of the new ‘Viceroyalty of Peru’. Here, the representative indigenous person symbolically encounters his fate in the form of the European invaders and conquerors’ means of transport.

Born in La Paz in 1984, Kiro Russo completed a degree in film directing at the Universidad del Cine in Buenos Aires, where he also made his first short films. ‘All the short and feature films I’ve made so far are interconnected,’ says Russo, ‘there are echoes of one in the other, and the feature films I’ve made are the result of things I’ve tried and expanded from my short films.’ JUKU (2012), a brief visit to the tin mine of Huanuni, shares its location with VIEJO CALAVERA, and the bird’s eye view from which the history of the small family in NUEVA VIDA (NEW LIFE, 2015) is shown hints at the panoramic shots that survey La Paz in EL GRAN MOVIMIENTO.

With Huanuni and La Paz, Russo chooses two locations that are organised in opposition: the internal and external mining area around Mount Posokoni is contrasted with the ups and downs of the Bolivian government. Within its urban sprawl, La Paz has a difference in altitude of almost 1,000 metres and a temperature difference of 6 degrees Celsius. The original La Paz lies in a basin at about 3,200 metres; the former district of El Alto, now independent, is situated on the western plateau. To the southeast, the four-peaked Illimani rises to almost 6,500 metres, opening up spectacular views. The social gradient in La Paz / El Alto is counterintuitive: the poor live at the top; the rich at the bottom. Since the extraordinary topographical conditions make regular car traffic difficult, cable cars facilitate movement and transport in the cities. But people also walk a lot, upstairs and downstairs; and those who need to transport things – and can afford it – sometimes have porters carry their loads through the steep, narrow streets.

Some of this is already evident in Russo’s first short ENTERPRISSE (2010), in which a large cowboy figure goes on a mountain hike, and his porter rewards himself with a fast-paced ride at the fairground. For his Carte Blanche, Russo selected his fellow countryman Antonio Eguino’s 1977 film CHUQUIAGO. In four episodes, this film paints a sociologically accurate picture of urban space, politics and society, inspiring Russo with its quasi-documentary character. The other two feature-length films that Russo has chosen to accompany his own have been selected for the programme because they are borderline (un)real: MULHOLLAND DRIVE (David Lynch, 2001) and BU SAN (GOODBYE, DRAGON INN, Tsai Ming-liang, 2003) explore real places (Los Angeles / an old cinema) just as much as the fictious space within them (Hollywood dream factory / the classic film DRAGON INN by King Hu, 1967). Conscious of history, they give rise and way to that which is wondrous – as Russo’s films do. And we are made to wonder about their magical charm and horror.