In celebration of the month in which we focus our attention on our home, planet Earth, and the numerous problems that plague it, for many of which humans are responsible, we look back at the cinema which, for a hundred years, has contributed to creating awareness of the importance of caring for nature.

Reflecting on the screen the wonders of nature and the current dramas about the interrelation between man and the environment have been, and continue to be, an adventure that has had many exponents in world cinema.

From Nanook of the North (1922) through Man of Aran (1934), both by Robert Flaherty, to Las Hurdes: Tierra sin pan (Land Without Bread) (1933) by Luis Buñuel, at the beginning of documentary cinema, it was already possible to glimpse how the environment is capable of intervening in the construction of human culture.

A decisive step, without a doubt, was the contribution of Jacques-Yves Cousteau, a well-known marine researcher. Cousteau decided to make common people aware of what has been happening on our planet. The scientist knew how to transform scientific data into public information, easily understood, with audiovisual narration in which adventure, science, and life were the protagonists.

Aside from these great documentary films, fiction cinema with an ecological dimension has also left a deep mark, covering a multitude of stories and genres. To celebrate the month dedicated to planet Earth, we focus on Spanish and Latin American cinema, which has reflected a great concern for complex environmental issues for more than five decades such as:

 

The Amazon Forest

 

 

En la selva no hay estrellas (No Stars in the Jungle) (1967). This film by Peruvian director Armando Robles Godoy takes place in the Amazon, where the jungle metes out justice when the excessive ambition of the human being reaches from the urban city to the rural environment in search, literally, of easy gold.

From the same filmmaker, there’s La muralla verde (The Green Wall) (1970), also filmed in the Amazon jungle. The film reflects the attempts of a couple of settlers to stay in the jungle and the bureaucratic struggle they must face to achieve their dreams. The story comes from the memories of Robles Godoy, who for eight years lived in the jungle with his family, trying to become a farmer, encouraged by a colonization program in the Amazon that was ultimately a failure.

El abrazo de la serpiente(Embrace of the Serpent) (2015) takes place in the 20^th Century Amazon. The story, by Colombian director Ciro Guerra, is inspired by the travel diaries of the German ethnologist Theodor Koch Grünberg and American biologist Richard Evans Schultes.

This film was conceived as a fluvial “road movie” that sails into the depths of the Amazon jungle, an ethereal journey into the unknown, on the limits between the physical and the spiritual, submerged in the terrible ravages of colonialism hungry for rubber. It was the first Colombian film nominated for an Oscar and its plot is still current.

 

Harmony and Coexistence with Nature

 

 

La tentación de Nixhix (The Temptation of Nixhix) (2015). This Bolivian feature film, collectively directed by G. Yumani, N. Ipamo, R.D. Cayaduro, M. Zelady, M. Cárdenas, and F. Gutiérrez, is based on a true event that occurred in 2006. The film tells how the arrival of loggers completely changes the lives of the Chiquitano people (3.6% of the population of Bolivia).

Nixhix, which in the Besîro dialect means Spirit of the Mountain, highlights the problems of the indigenous people facing the advantages and disadvantages of globalization that breaks the harmony between man and Mother Earth.

Nadie quiere la noche (Endless Night) (2015). In this film, Spanish director Isabel Coixet narrates the adventures and misadventures of Josephine Peary to meet her husband, the explorer Robert Peary, and conquer the North Pole in 1908. The encounter with an Inuit woman and the harshness of the Arctic will change your perspective on life.

At the other end of the Earth, in Antarctica, takes place the story of El faro de las orcas (The Lighthouse of the Whales) (2016) by Spanish filmmaker Gerardo Olivares. Olivares, a long-time documentary filmmaker dedicated to the study of the correlation between the environment and living beings, takes us to the northern area of ​​Patagonia, to the Valdés Peninsula, where orcas live among imposing cliffs, extreme wind, and arid vegetation.

Those enormous and fascinating cetaceans make men like Roberto Bubas, a wildlife ranger who lives in a modest cabin between two lighthouses, turn his profession as environmental protector into the reason for his existence.

On the other hand, the film Wiñaypacha (Eternity) (2017) by Peruvian director Oscar Catacora tells the story of an elderly couple who live in the remote Andean mountains. Their life is marked by survival facing a powerful nature, as well as the painful absence of their son, who went to the city in search of work and never returned. It was the first movie to be filmed entirely in the language of Aymara, a people settled in the border area of ​​Peru, Chile, and Bolivia.

 

Country Life

 

 

Tasius (Tasio) (1984). Directed by Montxo Armendariz, tells the story of a charcoal burner from Navarra, in the north of Spain, who gives up emigrating to the city to earn a living, to instead maintaining his personal freedom and lifestyle in the mountains in complete solitude.

Rural life, seen through the prism of an alleged arsonist, is what Galician director Oliver Laxe develops in O que arde (Fire Will Come) (2019). It is a reflection on life in a rural setting, at the discretion of nature, between human beings and the natural environment, and the relationships between people in a hostile environment.

The story is about the loss of a home, the loss of a way of life, and the conservation of the native forest and forest fires as conditioning factors for the Galician landscape.

Colombian director Juan Sebastián Mesa, with his film La roya (The Rust) (2021) forms a portrait of the rural lifestyle in the countryside, where living is an act of resistance. It is a story that explores the clash between the rural and the urban, the struggle between tradition and modernity, between progress that does not bear the promised fruits and a past that refuses to remove the chains that prevent it from giving way to a new world.

 

Environmental Activism

 

El Olivo (The Olive Tree) (2015). Spanish director Iciar Bollain narrates the struggle of a young woman to recover a hundred-year-old olive tree sold to a company to serve as a decoration for its headquarters. Elements such as the economic crisis, the transformation of life in the countryside, the defense of nature, social networks, and contact with people from other countries and cultures are the platform to build this metaphor of uprooting and the possibility of recovering what seemed lost.

From Spain, we jump to the province of Misiones, in Argentina, where the Argentine filmmaker, based in Brussels, Diego Martinez Vignatti filmed La tierra roja (The Red Land) (2015). The film tells and reflects on what we do with our land but also with ourselves because issues such as deforestation, the use of agrochemicals, violence, and corruption are very present in the plot. It is the story of the environmental struggle of a rural community against the use of agrochemicals by a multinational paper company in Argentina. –

 

Translated by Mario Amaya