Film Project

http://quitofilm.blogspot.com

In 2006, The Quito Project expanded to include The Quito Film Collective, an independent film collective that aims to enhance intercultural communications between Ecuador and the United States. The film was envisioned as a short ethnographic documentary propelled by local narratives of urban and indigenous life in and around Quito, the capital city of Ecuador.

Footage was collected in July and November of 2006 and the editing process is currently underway. The trilingual film focuses on notions of the body and health as revealed through personal stories of retirees, city dwellers, healers, indigenous and Afro-Ecuadorian peoples. Awe-inspiring landscapes provide the backdrop for intensely personal encounters with everyday people as they share their stories and visions of healing and suffering, of faith and chance.

The Quito Film Collective connects film faculty and students at the University of Michigan and the Art Institute of Chicago with global health researchers, anthropologists, and professional documentary filmmakers in Ann Arbor and Chicago. Collaborating with Ecuadorian musicians, filmmakers, and story-tellers, the Collective adopts a participatory approach to documentary filmmaking with the belief that the framing of problems and potential solutions should come from the community, not from the outside. Our role is to offer access to a medium for storytelling that is not available to most Ecuadorians. The Quito Film Collective brought film equipment and expertise, but left the story telling to their partners in Quito.

The Collective was conceived as a complement to The Quito Project's primary objectives. Recognizing that international aid efforts bring much needed expertise and supplies to recipient nations, the Collective also believed that the traditional development encounter often overlooks the strengths and potential of the people receiving aid. Therefore, in recognition of the value of local knowledge and the importance of expressing counter-narratives, The Quito Film Collective strives to replace the traditional donor-recipient model with one which promotes a collaborative two-way exchange of expertise, in which the roles of donor and recipient are blurred and all participants are empowered to find unique solutions to complicated international health problems.

In keeping with this philosophy, arrangements have been made to screen the finished film in various communities where footage was collected as well as in the United States. It is the hope of The Quito Project that this film will promote international dialogues and draw attention to issues of global health as well as sharing stories that highlight the universal experiences of humans in their quest for well-being.