Meraya

Meraya proposes a poetic audiovisual journey inspired by the ancestral knowledge of the Shipibo-Konibo people. It invites the viewer to plunge into the depths of the Amazon, fills the screen with fertile greenery, and opens a dialogue with the beings (material and spiritual) that inhabit the forest, the communities, and the rivers. The audiovisual drift interweaves kené designs, textile work, arts, dreams, and visions: elements related to balance, the beauty of the cosmos, and the radiance of spiritual worlds. Sound layers of Meraya are based on chants and musical compositions fused with the forest. This creates a primal and contemporary vision of Shipibo-Konibo culture. There are no voice-overs or animations in Meraya, but rather a refined and pristine experience of bonding with Indigenous spirituality and the unity of all that exists. According to the director, Pedro Favaron, this aesthetic work was born as a tribute, above all, "to the wisdom and beauty of the Indigenous women and their close links with the territory. What I was looking for, with this work, was to move away from the typical approach of visual anthropology that sees the native nations as subaltern and impoverished. I do not deny the violence of the colonisation of the Amazonian territories, but I believe that one must also go beyond that aspect, in order to appreciate the profound wisdom and dignity of the Indigenous peoples who hold ancestral knowledges and have much to teach the whole humanity, especially in this time when modernity has entered into an ecological, moral, and spiritual crisis.” "I live most of the time in the ancestral territory of the Shipibo-Konibo people. Almost all the scenes were filmed around our house, around Lake Yarinacocha, and in Santa Clara native community. Thanks to my marriage to Chonon Bensho, I am a member of the Indigenous family that has practised ancestral medicine since ancient times. I try to develop my art and my academic research from within this network of kinship and affinity, from the heart, and free of any ideological excess. It is necessary to have inner silence in order to be moved and penetrated by the voices of the plants, by the song of the rivers, by the breadth of the meanders, by the advice of the sages, and by the light of the ancestors. The film reflects the poetic emotion I feel when I see the faces of my relatives, the wild flowers, the kené designs, and the close link between the Amazonian people and the green fecundity of this beautiful and unfathomable territory.”