"Film" about Dominican Syncretic Religions on the web

[macocael]

Dont know where to put this really, but I thought that the membership might be interested to see a little film, or what we in the business call a "multimedia story" for the web: they are basically movies made from still images (a la Ken Burns) using today's software for streaming over the web. This one is a short piece, only 6 minutes long, but generally they are kept around this short because attention spans on the web are not long either.

there is a bit of everything in it: gag?, brujer?a, cofrad?as, the Liboristas, but none of it is explained in detail (that would be impossible); more like the general drift of the symbols and rituals is alluded to. If you want to read a bit more about it from the article I wrote (published in Geografica) you can read my blog: Trozos de un Viralata: El Camino de los Negros

But it is in Spanish, and rather difficult prose at that.

Click HERE for the web page bearing the film. If that doesnt work, paste this URL in your browser: Jon Anderson Camino De los Negros

Some of you,depending on your connection and your disk space and RAM, may experience some hiccups in the downloading of the film as it streams. It is set for a "progressive download", so if in fact you find that the film does not play smoothly, give it a second shot after it has had a chance to download fully, and it should play better. The problems with films over the web is that one has to compromise between quality and film size, and the more complex editing techniques, such as I have used here (synchronizing the sound with theimages, zooming and panning, dissolves, etc) stretch the capability of the web to deliver it. Enjoy.

 

[Lambada]

Good stuff! :classic: It actually worked a lot better than I was expecting from what you had said. I hadn't come across your blog before, so glad I now have. Really, really interesting.

 

[Lambada]

What? 16 hours later and no-one else looked at this.............? Maybe you lost 'em by using a word like syncretic, macoceal............. Where are the couth, culture vultures of DR1? You can learn something here - know I did.

 

[macocael]

Ha I thnik you're rightLambada . I iwll rename it!!!!

 

[A.Hidalgo]

Ok guys I have only seen about 5 minutes of the film. What I have seen is interesting and something not very well known about the DR. I will try to see the rest. In my case what attracted my attention was the title that now you want to change. Its just my nature to be curious I guess.

 

[macocael]

These things are short because delivery over the web poses various problems, but for longer endeavors we can "link-load" various segments and thus create a longer piece. There are several sites on the web that cater to the audience for these things. The premiere photo agency, Magnum, is leading the charge, along with Brian Storm's MediaStorm.

As I said, these are basically documentary films in the style of Ken Burns (The Civil War), which use film techniques to make still images come alive. But they are converted through various software into Flash presentations intended for viewing over the web. Companies are now beginning to employ people like me to make these films too for their websites.

I am not changing the name of the film, i was simply referring to the name of this thread; somehow the word "syncretic" appears to have scared people off. All it means is that these religious practices are a mix of Catholicism and African religious practices (as well as other sources). The name of the film comes from something an old santero said when he was asked about the nature of voodoo. He said, "well white folks have their ways, but we black folk follow a different path."

 

[Hillbilly]

Interesting.

If incomplete.

Too much to do with death and ordinary barrio life.

No Villa Mella

No Samaná during the Fiesta de Santa Bárbara!!

Too few intruments relating to the really "old" days.

Too superficial. I'd give it a C+ for effort, an A- for some of the photographs.

I'd add that with that amount of talent it might be good to get better resources and go and see the Palos in Villa Mella or any of the feast days in the most remote places.....good idea...

HB

 

[mountainfrog]

Good Approach To A Difficult Subject

... Enjoy...

I certainly did.
Hoping for your approval I put a link on my forum.
Will we see more of this?

m'frog

 

[macocael]

Hillbilly, that was a bit harsh, and superficial yourself dont you think? First of all if you dont understand why the death and barrio life is in there then you dont understand the nature of these practices as well as you think. Second of all if all you can suggest is the congos of Villa Mella and Samaná, then again you dont really know much at all about the subject. The idea was not to represent every tradition and practice, but enough of them so as to establish the main theme, which, as you clearly didnt grasp, is the symbolic meaning of the "road" from Exodus which unites these practices. Really, I would have expected a more judicious understanding of the material and the nature of this presentation. In the space of six minutes it manages to discuss the core themes and it gets the blood racing and piques one's interest. It is a "short", a teaser.

Better resources? I have no idea what you are talking about. As for visiting all the other places, I have done so and continue to do so: such work takes time and lots of money. Feast days in the remote areas? What the heck do you think is there right in front of your eyes? Those paleros are members of the Cofradía de El Batey. They are up in the mountains above San Juan. Remote? you bet! I chose them for this film precisely becuase everyone knows about the Cofradía in Villa Mella,but no one has seen the Cofradía of El Batey. Get it? Or the Liboristas of Maguna Arriba. Not too remote, but remote enough. What, they dont count? Not "old" enough for you? All of these rituals and places will eventually be fully documented in the book when it is published. These are films for the web, they are not intended to be enthnological dissertations, but if you want such a discussion, believe me I can give it to you. FYI, Juan Rodriguez of the Museo del Hombre Dominicano, UNESCO, Dagoberto Tajeda and a host of other specialists in the field immediately understood the purpose of the film and the reasons for its brevity -- a brevity which manages to pack quite a lot of meaning into a short space, meaning which you obviously didnt get, though everyone else seems to. It is poetry, not exposition. As for your grading of my photographs -- pedagogue to the core! -- you have no idea what you are talking about, which is usually the case with dry as dust academics. When was the last time you attended any of these events? When was the last time you bothered to inform yourself over the current state of photojournalism and documentary photography? Can you name me one leading photographer that is leading the way today? Ever hear of Magnum? Jesus wept!

 

[macocael]

I certainly did.
Hoping for your approval I put a link on my forum.
Will we see more of this?

m'frog

OK, now that I am cooled off. Yes, link away, all you want. As i said, this is just a teaser, just to see if I could master the software and film editing technique, which after all is a skill that professional editors get formal training in. I am working on instinct, but I have studied enough film to know how to put them together. The trick for longer endeavors, as I said, is to link-load them. You create separate smaller segments and then give each one a title, so viewers can click their way through but without overtaxing the ability of the web to download them. This little segment, because it made use of sophisticated transitions and synched the sound to the images in specific ways, ended up creating a dv file version that was over a gig long. I then had to encode that in FLash to create a smaller file that manages to retain the visual quality. that file is 20 MB. Still rather large for downloading. this is tough to master, and it took me a week to make that little segment (not to mention the years it took to gather the photos). Check the link for Magnum to see how they do it. Actually their editing is simpler than mine.

The next production will be on the sugar plantations, and that will include some oral history as well as historical texts (columbus, the king of spain, and more modern bits, including poetry and song lyrics). It will be divided up into at least five segments. It will include Holga footage from the colonial plantations as well as modern documentary imagery of the bateys, the ingenios and the culture of the bateyeros.

As for Camino, when I get enough money together and can return to the places where these rituals take place (Higuey, B?nica, Maguana Arriba, Haina, Villa Mella, El Batey, and countless other places), then I will capture some sound and amplify that aspect of the presentation,but it could take years as many of these events happen but once a year. However, even that finished product will not be expository in nature, but poetic. There is a difference, and it is worth dwelling on that difference, so long as we bear in mind that poetic truth is every bit as valuable as scholarly exposition, though it has different objectives. If one really wants to delve into these practices, then there are a host of books out there, and it is not hard to acquire a good bit of knowledge about the details of these practices. The details that interest me are embodied in the photographs, whose virtue lies in their immediacy. That is all the detail I need or want. What i am trying to present here is an understanding of the underlying poetic truth, the web of metaphoric meaning, the symbolic content if you will, of these practices. One of the interesting things about the various practices of syncretic religion is that they are in fact united in theme and symbol, and there is good reason for that: Exodus is the key motif because after all this is liberationist theology of a particularly trenchant type, since it was created out of the experience of slavery. While many people have gone to Cuba or Haiti, very few people come here to study Dominican religious practices, and they are very rich indeed, though gradually disappearing in the wake of development.

This new medium is in its infancy and it suffers from many inherent limitations; but we have to recognize that the web is the new popular press, the new means of mass communication. Magazines in the middle of the 2oth century brought us news of what it was like to be a grunt, for example, at Normandy. But magazines and the photojournalism that they purveyed have been superceded by newer media. Television, of course -- and the web. With the web, however, still imagery can play a role again in the dissemination of knowledge through new forms of reportage. Moreover, the forms are still openended and no one quite knows what shape they will take in time to come, so it is all uncharted territory. A photographer like myself can hope to exploit various media in order to get his work out: galleries and museums; books; webpages; web films; and magazines too, though they dont play the role they used to. In this way, a very important form of visual art is kept alive and kicking. It is still relevant.

Photojournalism is not intended to be the final word on anything; it is built of imagery, not text; emotion, not exposition. And while one might argue that a photograph can be useful in that it presents factual evidence about a given event, the recent controversy about the photojournalism from Lebanon is ample proof of the fact that images are tricky things -- even if we are resolutely scrupulous and dont alter a damn thing, a photograph still has the potential to mislead if it is taken out of context or badly contextualized -- hence the need for text, for editorial explication. But we need to look to imagery for other reasons, not for proof of what was, but for the feeling of what once was, the humanity of that experience. I both write and shoot: the two practices form very different types of narratives. They can be combined to produce a fuller esthetic and cognitive experience, but they are ultimately each of them inadequate -- and yet, paradoxically, quite sufficient if one understands their capabilities and accepts them.

 

[Hillbilly]

Sorry to cause you Pique. I just finished reading the above comment and realized just how much work you put into this. You are to be congratulated for a job pretty well done. I could never have done this in this lifetime. And I like your list of places to go....I'll look for more...for you...

Actually, I missed the infor on the paleros de San Juan (El Batey), probably since I had the sound too low. My bad.

Death and the rites surrounding death are interesting, but I sure missed the "road" theme....perhaps if I had the sound....

You know, I was thinking of the area around San Juan and Las Matas...the area where Liborio reigned...("Dicen que Liborio esta mueito, pero él no e'ta mueito na': Yo lo vi caminando en lo' campos' de Samaná..."

I know/knew a lot about Palma Sola and what went on there...good place to work on this.

Also in the area around Barahona..

Samaná has deep, deep African roots that are not often seen in public. When I went to see the Santa Bárbara ceremonies and witness women "montao" it was in a remote shack, far from the center of town....

I guess you know of the Ibo roots to the ceremonies in Villa Mella?

Sorry to be harsh...maybe too much coffee...

HB

 

[something_of_the_night]

macocael, I find this very interesting. You once posted that you were recording this kind of activities, but I did not know you were so far along, since these things take time.

You refer to Liboristas, which is the popular term, instead of Olivoristas, the more apt name - is that by design in keeping with the traditional way of saying it?

Thanks for sharing; I'm looking forward to your next installment.

-Joseito

 

[macocael]

That is ok, sorry to be so "energetic" in my rebuke. But like Liborio, yo "no como pendajá." Ha! Certainly from a scholar's point of view such short pieces will seem incomplete. Martha Ellen Davis liked it well enough, but I suspect she felt that it didnt go far enough (I have yet to reply to her response and discuss i t more fully) -- but after all, she has dedicated her whole life to interpreting these practices, and began doing so when no one in outside of DR was the slightest bit interested. Her classic, La Otra Ciencia, was published back in the late 70s. Imagine. She has also done lots of work up in Samana. A short piece like this cannot hope to flesh out the incredibly complex motifs and ideas that lie behind these rituals, so all I can hope to do is grasp the poetic, emotional feeling, explain some basic themes, and then pray that the would be student will then be animated enough to go off and study it more fully. Or even participate. The power of these films to do just that is as yet unrealized, but the potential is there. I would aim for films of about 15 or 20 minutes in length, as well as teasers -- my feeling is that if the stuff is compelling enough people will stick around to the end, and so far that has been the response. Many people have told me that they were riveted. BUT you have to have the sound playing. The soundtrack is the engine behind a film, it is what drives the narrative. That is the problem for photographers, because they dont usually think about sound. But a film editor thinks almost exclusively about how the sound propels the thing. Anyway, there is some skepticism about how long most people will allow for viewing anything on the web, so most of these presentations have stuck to around 6 minutes as an average length. Magnum is currently producing longer pieces which have been well received -- but only by the "choir." However, even if people wont sit still for, say, 15 minutes, the potential for these things is still considerable. one rarely spends more than a few minutes on a magazine article, so pictures delivered in this manner could be quite effective. And imagine what a scholar like Davis could do with them: right now she is heading up a huge enterprise to collect oral histories from round the country and deposit them in a central holding library--but how many people will ever see or hear them? If we were to make short films for the web, however, that covered each region or hit on specific themes, imagine how many young people could gain an intimate knowledge of their own cultural roots in this manner? That new Pedro Mir library at the UASD with its fancy computers could be put to work to disseminate knowledge of this country's heritage. People would see the work, enjoy it, consume it in a quick and easily accessible manner. Otherwise, like most library projects, I fear that the material will just gather dust. Plus the genre, I hate to say it, is very much geared to the post-MTV generation. I myself prefer a nice quiet book, but books are not much present in the average Dominican's life; computers, however, are very much sought after.

FYI, I dont talk about the Cofradía of El Batey in the soundtrack. There is just no time to do so. The soundbite about the Road as a symbol from exodus is inserted at the moment that the images of the pilgrimage to that mountain town appear. Again, the intention was not to explain the various cofradías and how they are defined. It is more important that people understand that Exodus is at the back of all this stuff, and perhaps i should have made the link to slavery clearer, as I do in the article I wrote. In the longer version I would certainly hope to explain a little more, maybe even record some of the elders of the cofradía. And I can also use title cards, like the old silents, to describe some things. But it all has to be very abbreviated, unfortunately. Btw, the whole of San Juan is rich in brujería and other such practices so I have concentrated my efforts there.

The vodú ceremonies are almost always outside of town, in the slums, or out in the loma. There is plenty of it round here in the capital, and one shot in the film is of a San Rafael celebration in Haina. at that particular party, there were no less than three different brujas "montá". I got a nice little consultation out of that one too. I have yet to cover all the different little festivities -- and some of them can be disappointing as the leading lights responsible for maintaining them have passed on and the rituals dwindle; but I have covered all the big ones, and I go back whenever i can, but it is exhausting. I have an old directory from the Folklore museum and more than a few of those listed have simply disappeared. I am engaged in capturing things that will some day simply cease to exist. The last time I walked with the pilgrims to El Batey (always on Pentecost, because the cofradías all worship Espiritu Santo, the reason being is that the majority of the slaves who came to the colony in the early days were congolese, and their religious worship was monotheistic, unlike the Yoruba who arrived later) -- that last trip I made was kind of sad, because the party was not quite what it had once been. And the same goes for the Liboristas. The sanctuary at the top of the hill where they baptize one another has been rebuilt by the ayuntamiento -- a sign of respect no doubt, but the modernization of the grounds has created a rather different ambience. Olivorio's niece is still there though.

OK, off to bed, hatchet buried -- or machete rather. I may be going to Samana this time round, I will let youknow. Abrazos.,

 

[macocael]

macocael, I find this very interesting. You once posted that you were recording this kind of activities, but I did not know you were so far along, since these things take time.

You refer to Liboristas, which is the popular term, instead of Olivoristas, the more apt name - is that by design in keeping with the traditional way of saying it?

Thanks for sharing; I'm looking forward to your next installment.

-Joseito

Yeah I just adopt their way of saying it. They all say liborio, never Olivorio. their sanctuary is called La Aguita, and it is up in the loma behind Maguana Arriba.

The fuller version of this particular story will have to wait. One reason I made it was to test my command of the software and film editing techniques, and then use this as a sample to hawk so I can raise more money to continue. I will eventually return to it when I can capture sound and get oral histories, and thus really bring the viewer close in. Meanwhile the next project is sugar cane. that should begin soon. I am also trying to get UNESCO and the Direccion de Patrimonio Monumental to collaborate with me on a similar project about the Colonial city. The history, the architecture, and the community life here, because it is a center for artists, bohemians, eccentrics and other colorful characters -- and though they keep a low profile, the "aristocracy" as well. I want to interview them all and make a film that could serve to promote a better class of tourism here.

 

[margaret]

I came out of the Sankie threads long enough to visit this one. LOL So glad I did! With dialup, I had to wait a long time to view the film but it was well work the wait. It's very interesting. I was chatting with a friend SD and he mentioned that Haitians make dirrect eye contact and hold it longer than Dominicans and that it's unnerving. I asked him if it was perceived as "evil eye" and he said no. And then I asked him if there is any Santeria or Voodu in DR and he denied it. And then when I pressed him a little further, he started to admit that it exists. Why the denial?

I'll be sure to send him a link to this film. I hope to see you adding video podcasts to your blog soon. Best of luck with your efforts to get funding for your projects.

Cheers!

 

[RHM]

Interesting stuff. I enjoyed it.

Ignore the negative feedback from the usual DR1 snobs. We all can't have a Spielberg budget. I admire your creativity.

Check your PMs,

Scandall

 

[margaret]

New form of discourse

OK, now that I am cooled off. Yes, link away, all you want. As i said, this is just a teaser, just to see if I could master the software and film editing technique, which after all is a skill that professional editors get formal training in. I am working on instinct, but I have studied enough film to know how to put them together. The trick for longer endeavors, as I said, is to link-load them. You create separate smaller segments and then give each one a title, so viewers can click their way through but without overtaxing the ability of the web to download them. This little segment, because it made use of sophisticated transitions and synched the sound to the images in specific ways, ended up creating a dv file version that was over a gig long. I then had to encode that in FLash to create a smaller file that manages to retain the visual quality. that file is 20 MB. Still rather large for downloading. this is tough to master, and it took me a week to make that little segment (not to mention the years it took to gather the photos). Check the link for Magnum to see how they do it. Actually their editing is simpler than mine.

The next production will be on the sugar plantations, and that will include some oral history as well as historical texts (columbus, the king of spain, and more modern bits, including poetry and song lyrics). It will be divided up into at least five segments. It will include Holga footage from the colonial plantations as well as modern documentary imagery of the bateys, the ingenios and the culture of the bateyeros.

As for Camino, when I get enough money together and can return to the places where these rituals take place (Higuey, B?nica, Maguana Arriba, Haina, Villa Mella, El Batey, and countless other places), then I will capture some sound and amplify that aspect of the presentation,but it could take years as many of these events happen but once a year. However, even that finished product will not be expository in nature, but poetic. There is a difference, and it is worth dwelling on that difference, so long as we bear in mind that poetic truth is every bit as valuable as scholarly exposition, though it has different objectives. If one really wants to delve into these practices, then there are a host of books out there, and it is not hard to acquire a good bit of knowledge about the details of these practices. The details that interest me are embodied in the photographs, whose virtue lies in their immediacy. That is all the detail I need or want. What i am trying to present here is an understanding of the underlying poetic truth, the web of metaphoric meaning, the symbolic content if you will, of these practices. One of the interesting things about the various practices of syncretic religion is that they are in fact united in theme and symbol, and there is good reason for that: Exodus is the key motif because after all this is liberationist theology of a particularly trenchant type, since it was created out of the experience of slavery. While many people have gone to Cuba or Haiti, very few people come here to study Dominican religious practices, and they are very rich indeed, though gradually disappearing in the wake of development.

This new medium is in its infancy and it suffers from many inherent limitations; but we have to recognize that the web is the new popular press, the new means of mass communication. Magazines in the middle of the 2oth century brought us news of what it was like to be a grunt, for example, at Normandy. But magazines and the photojournalism that they purveyed have been superceded by newer media. Television, of course -- and the web. With the web, however, still imagery can play a role again in the dissemination of knowledge through new forms of reportage. Moreover, the forms are still openended and no one quite knows what shape they will take in time to come, so it is all uncharted territory. A photographer like myself can hope to exploit various media in order to get his work out: galleries and museums; books; webpages; web films; and magazines too, though they dont play the role they used to. In this way, a very important form of visual art is kept alive and kicking. It is still relevant.

Photojournalism is not intended to be the final word on anything; it is built of imagery, not text; emotion, not exposition. And while one might argue that a photograph can be useful in that it presents factual evidence about a given event, the recent controversy about the photojournalism from Lebanon is ample proof of the fact that images are tricky things -- even if we are resolutely scrupulous and dont alter a damn thing, a photograph still has the potential to mislead if it is taken out of context or badly contextualized -- hence the need for text, for editorial explication. But we need to look to imagery for other reasons, not for proof of what was, but for the feeling of what once was, the humanity of that experience. I both write and shoot: the two practices form very different types of narratives. They can be combined to produce a fuller esthetic and cognitive experience, but they are ultimately each of them inadequate -- and yet, paradoxically, quite sufficient if one understands their capabilities and accepts them.

Yes! It's very exciting to see all the media converging on the Internet. It's a new form of discourse blurring the boundary between the writer and the reader (the sender and the receiver) that you couldn't experience interacting with other media.

I was thinking that you might consider applying for a grant from the Bill Gate's Foundation to fund some of your work. I'm dead serious! I haven't had any Brugal ... lol... and if I did I would not pass the bottle. This link points to the application for health projects. Global Health Program - Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation They recently funded new open source journals Public Library of Science that are shaking up the traditional peer-reviewed system of publishing. There might be other funds available for cultural work. Just a thought.

Global Health Program - Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

 

[margaret]

New form of discourse

I do tend to repeat my self... but somehow i posted another copy of this.
Help!!

 

[Lambada]

I sent the link to my buddy at the Los Afrolatinos Forum. Hope that's ok.

 

[platanos64]

Just saw the video. Outstanding work. One of those hidden stories that many do not know (or want to know) about even some of us Dominicans.