To the ears of the city come stories that seem more to be legends from another time. The oral tradition brings to light rituals, that sound more like folk tales and not tangible realities.
Giovanna Miralles travelled to the town of Quillacas in the Andean plateau to render into images the awatiris' ritual. Umaturka is an ethnographic documentary, which documents one of the ancestral andean traditions still performed, well into the XXI century.
With a hand-held camera the director proposes that we follow the protagonists of the ritual, the men and women who carry to town the waters collected from different springs, to return them to the earth, the place where they are needed. With the magnificent catholic temple as a backdrop, the community members begin the ritual outside the church, this is the first evocative element of the film, as made evident in subsequent sequences, this invocation to the catholic world conceals other divine relations that are nuanced as a consequence of a colonial past and part of the religious syncretism. To be there and not to be there, or to be always near but outside.
Umaturka turns to inter titles, like silent films of old, to give the spectator a coherent narrative thread, written by the director, they endeavour to make those who are watching the film participant of what is happening on screen, always talking in the first person, for those who read the texts, a resource similar to the voice-over — a classic recourse of ethnographic documentary — which in this case wins in its intention to be an element more of the denominated 'auteur documentary'.
Following the protagonists of this story the documentarist permits us to learn what takes place in Quillacas over more than 24 hours, in which the various stages of the ritual are performed. In the same way that certain sequences of the documentary have pedagogic characteristics, in other moments of the ritual the participants seem to forget the camera's presence and it is here when the film wins in its narrative intensity.
Miralles is faced in several moments with a story that surpasses the dimensions of the frame, that is to say, too many things are happening away from what we see. Faced with this dilemma, the director settles the matter in a very interesting way, Umaturka has a soundtrack that in certain moments replaces the direct sound, suggesting in this way that something else is occurring, when it is only possible to see a certain action. Here is a gesture of respect to the ritual that gives an ethical sense to the documentary,when confronted with what to be seen, at the time of recording.
The documentary, which was filmed in 2006, enables the discovery that certain forms of gratitude towards the earth still survives and makes evident the Andean cosmic vision, for some only part of a discourse, Umaturka talks to us about living cultures that maintain their traditions despite adversities, and although confronted with the possibility of their disappearance or suspension, they are strengthened even when everything seems lost.
Conflict arises towards at the end of the film. Now, who will take charge of receiving the flag for the following year so the ritual of the awatiris can be performed once more. It is here, in this unexpected end that Umaturka turns again in what could only be an 'auteur documentary', it does not stay with the simple ethnographic registration, rather with the camera's presence it seems to participate in a complex decision taken within the community and its leaders. One more time the hand-held camera — as in the beginning — follows the protagonists and they forget this mechanical recording device, which still seems strange in this world suspended between the divine and the profane.