The Ecopoetic Mode in Araya and Other Latin American Documentaries

• In Event: Latin American Mixed-Media Poetry After World War II

Abstract

The 1959 documentary, Araya, by the Venezuelan director, Margot Benacerraf depicts a day in the life of the small towns that live off the sea or the salt marshes of a remote area in Venezuela. From sun up to sun up the townspeople eek out their living under the blazing sun and out of the capricious sea. Araya documents these people and their lives as part of an ecosystem within which humans fight to survive. As Benacerraf contends, however, Araya is not a documentary but a “tone poem.” Benacerraf’s contention highlights the aesthetic value of her film as scholars like Bill Nichols have pointed out how documentaries can be characterized as poetic by their dynamic use of tone, rhythm, and formal organization. By labeling her documentary a poem, the director asks the viewer to ‘read’ the images, music, and voice-over narration as one would read a poem. And in the case of Araya and other similarly self-labeled poem-documentaries from Latin America this reading must consider the aesthetic alongside the ethical and ecological discourse. Hence, this paper will show that Araya goes beyond the idea of the poetic mode into what can be called the ecopoetic mode. That is, this paper proposes to analyze the links between Latin American documentaries, like Araya, that use an poetic mode of representation and the ecological subject matter that they represent.

Author

• Mac J Wilson, Brigham Young University