When I was twenty years old I got lost exploring the mountains of Macchu Picchu. I almost died… The Indians who rescued me gave me this song as a parting gift:
« On ghe shore of the Urubamba river / I wrote your name in the sand/ The wave rolled in / and washed it away / No trace of your name remains.
The men who savec my life slipped away into the fog without ever telling me their names. But I will never forget that they treated me like family.
Forty years later I have returned to Macchu Picchu to start a new journey.
I’m on my way to reconnect with long lost friends, mi familia Americana. I need them to help me take the pulse of Americas.
Award
Prix Image – Rencontre international du documentaire de Montréal, 2007
Media
« The filmmaker’s narration, magnificently written, accompanies us from the beginning of the journey to the end without ever appearing unnecessarily talkative, inviting us at once to a political reflection and a poetic awakening. Americano paints a vast canvas in which the living sing, ghosts whisper and men speak with animals. But even with such a dense narrative, our experience of the film cannot be reduced to the text, for its message is also expressed through the bewitching dance of images, the changing colours of the countries and the stories one can only read in faces. From time to time, the camera, guided by emotion and instinct, invites us to step into reality as if it were a dream, then brings us back to a world which at moments resembles a nightmare, haunted by suffering and death. » (Nicolas Renaud, Hors Champ)
Credits
Documentary, 110 minutes, 2007
Research, script, cinematography and direction / Carlos Ferrand Zavala
With / Fortunata Gómez, Pablo Perelman, César Pérez, Carol Cruickshank, Fred Adler, Ajuba et Hisani, Elisapi Ishulutak
Sound recording / Catherine Van der Donckt, Marcel Fraser, Juan Tadeo, Guarani Baruch Arias, René Laruta, Isaac Moreno
Editing / Dominique Sicotte
Sound editing / Benoît Dame, Catherine Van der Donckt
Producer / Sylvain L’Espérance
Les films du tricycle 