I was born in Madrid, worked and lived in many places around the world, but the three and a half years I stayed in Brazil transformed my perspective on many things, especially on cinema. I really admire Brazilian cinema because I think it is much more connected to society than European cinema. I feel that what drives Brazilian cinema is still the willingness to question, to speak up, to provoke. They believe in the power of cinema as a tool for transformation. In Europe, I see that the main drive is the film itself, is wanting to make a good film. It’s much more narcissistic, more academic. Brazilians make movies with a spontaneity that may seem imperfect, but it’s more alive and for me that is much more exciting.
Before filming “Ex-Pajé” (2018), also with director Luiz Bolognesi, I had no contact with the na-tive people. During the years that I lived in Brazil, I was always interested in the Brazilian identity, I had read Sergio Buarque de Holanda and Lévi-Strauss, but I never went in too deep. The process of making these two films, and being able to have the opportunity to live with the Paiter Surui and the Yanomami, and hear their stories, told by themselves, provided me with a connection with all these issues in a physical, political and spiritual way. I am really a different person since I had this contact with them, I learned to fight against my ethnocentrism and now I see the world in a different way.
All this thanks to Luiz Bolognesi, whom I met in the pre-production of “Como Nosso Pais”, by Laís Bondanzky. He was the screenwriter and producer, was always close to set and he liked the film’s approach, which had a dynamic at times close to documentary. He told me he had a project about shamans (pajé, in Portuguese), but I still didn’t know what a shaman was. Then we got closer and I was invited to participate. He has a degree in anthropology and has a great love and knowledge for native peoples, along with his artistic sensitivity, political responsibility and willingness to make cinema, which make him a very special person. I remember that we did a long pre-production, with lots of conversations, watching movies together (documentaries, fiction and even Japanese animation), talking and listening to Luiz a lot, which is a real treat. This was a master of native peoples for me, I learned a lot. I think part of my job is knowing how to listen: listening to the story, the director, the actors… The great Swiss-American photographer and documentary filmmaker Robert Frank has a phrase that says: “The eye should learn to listen before it looks”. You need to connect with what you’re going to portray before you actually do the portrait. In this contemplation prior to the act of photographing, in this calm, this is where you find what makes what you want to portray unique, your essence.
“Ex-Pajé” had a lot of connection with the white man in the city, as the shaman had to assume the evangelical religion so he wouldn’t be isolated in his community. It was also an external and more academic approach, pictorial and orthodox in its composition. We were very influenced by Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s cinema, more specifically by Cemetery of Splendour (Thailand, 2015), which had just been released at that time. Now, over time, I think we were imposing a vision. There was a rigidity in the form, which I even find interesting because it relates to the character’s conflict. But, in “The Last Forest”, we wanted the opposite, something more organic, with fluidity, we didn’t want to impose formal limits. It’s as if the two films formed a diptych, with opposing views, also translated into language. In one film, the shaman is being oppressed, there is an aesthetic rigidity. In the other, the shaman resists, fights for his freedom and the lan-guage of the film has more movement, it is more dynamic.
Luiz made it clear that he wanted beautiful films, aesthetic in their articulation. It wasn’t supposed to be a report or an insight on a poor people. The idea was to convey vitality, beauty and strength. Both films had a very low budget. In “Ex-Pajé”, we had only one first assistant camera, Alessandro Valese. Rodrigo Macedo, who was responsible for sound, also had the role of logger. In “The Last Forest”, in addition to Valese, we decided to take a logger, Filipe Caneo, to save this logging time. He operated the drone too. In both films there was also Carolina Fernandes, producer and assistant director who was fundamental for her experience with native peoples, her skill and sensibility.
A small team has many advantages. The agility to adapt to situations and improvise is much greater. Besides, in these films, the intimacy and the relationship with what was being told was so strong, that a very creative dynamic was built, where we talked a lot about the story we were creating with the entire team in a very collaborative way.
In both films, the visual style proposed that the lighting should be everything we needed. From the start, I didn’t even want to take a bounce board. I wanted to portray the place with its luminous characteristics, without the intervention of any extra gear. I wanted to make the effort to adapt to this landscape and discover its essence, without bringing any tricks that could standardize the image.
Without bringing lights and needing to portray the skin, we would have a very high contrast ratio between interiors and exteriors. We needed a sensor to protect this. We use AMIRA, which has the ARRI sensor, and it is a great option if you don’t need to shoot 4K or RAW. It’s a camera that could seem like a lesser alternative, but it’s still very interesting and it’s cheaper.
In “The Last Forest”, we went with ZEISS T1.3 Super Speed MKII lenses, the ones that have a triangle-shaped iris. I made the decision to make the wide shots with the aperture very closed. It was so much visual information that I wanted all of it to be in focus. In “Ex-Pajé” I chose an open aperture and missed that detail in the projections. We, cinematographers, are usually afraid of too much definition, in order not to have a very digital face. I decided to shoot the wides at T8 and T11. On the camera monitor, it was very harsh, but on the big screen it’s an almost three-dimensional spectacle. It was a matter of humility and trusting what we had in front of the camera. It was risky for me because I had never shot with such definition, but the places had such depth that I just wanted to see it all.
Since I am a non-indigenous person, the biggest conflict was trying to tell the story of the Yanomamis without being one of them. Although Davi Kopenawa had been on the project since the beginning, developing the script ideas together with Luiz, the challenge was how to respect-fully portray so much ancestral wisdom without imposing a language of the man of the city. I had just watched, in Lisbon, an Amerindian cinema exhibition made up of films filmed by indig-enous people, curated by Ailton Krenak. The title of one of the films was “Já Transformei em Imagem” (I Have Become the Image in English), directed by Zezinho Yube. This film impacted me a lot because it made me understand the importance they give to being in front of the cam-era, in “becoming the image”, and the parallel this has with the feeling of being hunted.
And of course, with all that in my head, I admit that, in the first few days of shooting, I felt exact-ly like a hunter on a safari. We didn’t sleep with them in the village. We stayed at a healt center 2km away. We slept, showered, and went to shoot dressed in our filmmaker outfits in the forest, with our Decathlon water bottles. I was in a moral conflict, it was something sacred that we couldn’t trivialize, it felt as if I was there to hunt down these frames and make a movie for the townspeople, making them “turn into images”.
As the days went by, I became more comfortable because we had some real experiences with them. It wasn’t just filming. We walked together in the forest, ate and played with them. We were like children because we didn’t know anything and we went there to learn everything from them. We didn’t know where to step. All this made our worlds, so different, to meet in this game of making a movie. It was an exercise in humility, both theirs and ours, which I think is conveyed in the film.
Yanomami people have very beautiful features on their faces, they transmit vitality. They are healthy and strong people. Sometimes we showed them the pictures and they thought it was all very funny, they teased it, with a great sense of humor. Nor are they afraid of conflict. If they don’t like something, they say it with the utmost ease. When we had to do more than one take, sometimes they didn’t think it was funny anymore, and it was clear from their attitude that it was better to stop because it wouldn’t work, and that’s okay. Davi was usually overly critical. We were scared when he would come around to watch playback.
After the movie was released, I realized that it was Davi himself who was hunting us. It was he who was taking the people of the city and putting them at the service of his people. He is a magical person, extremely sensitive and intelligent. A great warrior. Luiz used to say that cine-ma was like a dream and Davi replied: “So let’s dream together”.
My moral conflict with the fact of “hunting images” was resolved when we had the great privi-lege of “returning” these images to the Yanomami people themselves, when we returned to the Watoriki Village to screen it for them. It was magical and it was one of the happiest moments I’ve ever experienced in cinema. I felt that our film is an intersection of two cultures, which for 80 minutes share a common dream and struggle, as Davi said so well. I just hope that the film helps this dream to be shared, more and more, by more and more people.
Our fascination for them and their trust in us grew mutually throughout the shoot. One of the last scenes filmed was the moment of the great shamanic ritual, which they had never present-ed to any outsider before. At that time, we already knew each shaman and they knew us, we were already connected. It took hours. We went in dancing with the camera. I felt so grateful to be invited for this moment so intimate and so strong, at the same time I felt a great responsibil-ity.
In both documentary and fiction, there needs to be complete trust between those in front of and behind the camera. In documentary, this is even more important, as we are participating in their lives as guests. There is no technique or mechanics. It’s a matter of sensitivity and personal connection. My strategy is to try to go unnoticed as much as possible and not interact too much. Treat people with great care. I love the phrase “kindness breeds kindness”. A few weeks before going to Brazil to start filming, French director Agnès Varda died. Among the things that came out in the press, I read a phrase from her that I took as a great reference for the film: “Nothing is trite if you film people with empathy and love”. This conveys much more in the images than camera movement or tripod position.
When you’re filming with the camera you don’t have the editing time, you only have the action time. It is important to be aware that people are going to watch at another time, with another focus. For that, it helps a lot to have the experience of having edited your own material. I also highly recommend going through the editing room to watch the material with the editor. Early in my career a great editor, who was a friend, recommended that it would be very good if I count to five before changing the frame. It helps a lot to be aware of reading time and lower our anxiety when filming. We have to accept that we’re going to miss things that are happening at the same time, but you have to trust your intuition, what you’ve focused your attention on, because cinema often goes beyond what is in your frame.
This conversation about what is or is not real is almost philosophical. I don’t see life in a dualis-tic way. I like to be in the middle. In life, everything is interpretation. Nowadays, this relationship between what is true and what is a lie is very political. The truth is a piece of a mirror broken by a hammer, and each one decides which piece to keep. In the case of the documentary “The Last Forest”, there is a magic in everyday life that is difficult to separate. This is very clear to the Yanomami. For them, there is no difference between dream and reality. What they dream, hap-pened.
One day of shooting, a fellow Yanomami arrived tired. Luiz asked him why and he replied that he spent the night hunting a jaguar, in a dream. In the film’s cinematography, we tried to con-vey this feeling of ambiguity, without differentiating too much from dream and reality. In the film’s dream sequences, we only made some minor color changes and added a little glow to the highlights, but in a very subtle way, looking for a mystery that has to do with things you don’t quite understand, but you can feel. The film seeks to convey this idea of spirituality, this cosmol-ogy, this interpretation of the world.
There are many elements in the landscape of Yanomami lands that are a treasure for a cinema-tographer. Colors were a great gift that we just needed to leverage, that’s why we wanted to have a film with high color information. In this decision, the talent and sensitivity of the great Luisa Cavanagh, from Quanta Post, who also did the color for “Ex-Pajé” and who for me is irre-placeable, helped a lot.
For example, in the forest, if they were more Caucasian characters, green would have been re-flected on their skin. In the case of the Yanomami, their skin is almost red. The more color in-formation, the greater the chromatic contrast that is generated between green/cyan and red. As they are complementary colors, the result is a perfect combination to highlight both the skin and the forest, producing an almost magical effect, where it seems that the characters are actu-ally leaving the screen, as in a three-dimensional image.
The way Watoriki Village is set up makes it for a perfect film set that could have been designed by the best gaffer or art director. It has a large open-air circled “skylight” in the center, which makes the light bounce off the ground. In covered parts, where the ceiling is very low, the light-ing never hits directly. It is a side light reflected on a red earth, which then hits the characters, with a hidden wall in the background that serves as a negative fill.
The biggest question was how to position the characters in relation to the angle of the light that came in from this central opening. It would depend on the contrast ratio that was interesting for each scene, the possibilities were endless. We also needed to be careful not to abuse the back lighting, and know how to use this resource in favor of the narrative.
The Watoriki Village has an entire architecture generated by light. All share the same circular space, without walls or dividers. It is the light itself that makes this division. They manage to preserve the moments of intimacy, so that it is only possible to see the neighbor in places where there is a fire or a torch burning. The rest is total obscurity. It’s fascinating on a photographic level. We wanted to preserve this without introducing any external light sources.
In Davi’s full moon testimony, we used a Sony a7S with ISO 32000 with the ZEISS lens at T1.3. The moonlight in these places is amazing, like a spotlight. The first night, I was alone, hand held camera, positioned in discreet places, almost like an invisible ninja. With a normal film crew, it would never be possible to get to the places I filmed. Some of these shots were shot with a ISO 64000, and many of them are in the movie.
I was amazed by some shots that generated a flare effect when the hammocks swayed in front of the fire. When we needed to shoot near the fires, it got so hot when we got too close to the smoke. Sometimes we increased the light by using more wood in the fire and the heat and smoke also increased, of course. In those situations, yes, we used a small silver reflector for the scenes that had dialogues and we had to make several shots with light continuity, but I always left it far and kind of off, never straight on them. I thought it was better than using LED lights or candles, as the temperature and quality of light would be very artificial. The eyes were sweating so much I couldn’t even focus. We suffered. Sometimes I thought the material might be too dark or too noisy, I couldn’t judge at the time. But we took a risk, endured (many thanks to the team) and the sequences were very special and are among the scenes I liked the most. Whenever I watch again, I feel like I’m there with them.
With AMIRA, even during the day, we filmed at ISO 1250 and sometimes at ISO 1600. I admit that this courage to push sensitivity was influenced by Pedro Sotero’s work in “Aquarius”, when I heard him say that he shot the entire film at ISO 1600.
I did tests in 2:35:1 from photographs that Luiz Bolognesi took during the research. It seemed to me that the architecture of the original peoples combined well with this format, as the malocas have this design of horizontal entrances. It’s as if we invited this culture into the cinematographic language of the masses. We use the same aspect ratio in “Ex-Pajé”. This reinforces this idea of a diptych, of encouraging the public to see both worlds from the same frames. All of this aspect ratio choice, however, is very emotional. It is not a technical or intellectual argument.
The script was just 20 pages long, which focused on the story of their origins myth. Some characters to be portrayed were also defined, such as the women, Davi Kopenawa and the hunter Pedrinho Yanomami. During the shoot we created the narratives together, which were more in Luiz’s mind than on the script.
For “The Last Forest”, I didn’t want to work with references. I didn’t want to see anything through someone else’s eyes. I wanted to be there to live my own experience and make a personal impression.
I know Claudia Andujar’s work, but I didn’t want to review it. I also thought the work that Azul Serra did on the 25 years of Instituto Socioambiental video was amazing, but I only watched it once. It didn’t interest me to get there with information I had from non-indigenous people. That’s why I thought it was important to see Mostra Ameríndia with films produced by the indigenous people themselves, together with the opportunity I had to meet Ailton Krenak in person and listen to him during those days.
Of course, the book “A Queda do Céu” by Davi Kopenawa, which I started reading right after filming “Ex-Pajé”, was fundamental for me to get closer to Yanomami culture. It is a literature that stimulates the imagination, that is between poetry and philosophy, and where this feeling of dream and reality is a constant. This book made me feel like I was at Watoriki, with Davi, even before I went there. It’s magical.
Bringing cinematic references can be limiting. I usually see a lot of movies when I’m in pre-production process, but I use less and less as a reference. I think movies don’t stimulate our creativity so much, they stimulate our desire to imitate more. For me, in a creative process, painting, literature, photography, walking, swimming, meditating… or anything else that gives you pleasure in this life is more stimulating.
The first day of shooting was at Harvard University, where Davi Kopenawa gave a lecture. We had to film this because it was very symbolic, because the purpose of the project was precisely to put the voice of the Yanomami in places where that voice does not exist. We filmed the performance and the hotel room. We had already talked a lot about language of this moment in the film, but the big question was how to make this transition between the Yanomami land and the world of the city.
We came up with bed scene, which could be related to a dream or a nightmare, something dreamy and mysterious. We also filmed a movement with some trees that suggest this passage through nature. All this without knowing at what point that footage would fit in the final cut.
In the auditorium inside the university, we left the camera further away, with an academic vision that would allow us to see the white and non-indigenous people, in front of Davi. When the film is screened, this causes a mirror effect, as the cinema audience sees an audience who sees the lecture.
These shots were the first two days of the film, with an even smaller crew, me (carrying a Canon C300 + ZEISS T1.3 Super Speed Kit), plus Luiz and Carol in the production.
“The Last Forest” transformed me physically and emotionally, but I prefer not to mix my own story with the story of the movie. I have no problem saying that I had an accident while filming, that a tree fell on me, but I think we made this film to bring a voice to the Yanomami people, who have suffered and struggled for thousands of years. The narrative of the white man who had an accident making a film is, for me, a bit narcissistic, incomparable with their struggle for survival.
I survived because of a series of magical circumstances and because I was surrounded by a great team: the Yanomamis, Luiz, Carol, Alemão, Macedo and Filipe on set, but also Caio, Fabiano, Laís, Dani, Nati and Pablo, producers from Gullane and Buriti Filmes… and many more. People who, in addition to being very talented and who love cinema, are great human beings, with a big heart and great empathy. Because that’s the only way you can make cinema, surrounded by people you love and respect. Isn’t that so, dear Agnès Varda?
Spaniard Pedro J. Marquéz began his career as a film cinematographer in Madrid in 2000 and has since lived in the cities of São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Havana and Tokyo. After shooting two dozen shorts and documentaries over ten years, he shot the Spanish feature film “Secuestrados” (2010), a thriller made up of 12 long shots, shot in just 12 days. Thanks to the relevance of his work on this film, Japanese director Ryuhei Kitamura entrusted him with the Japanese super-production “Lupin The Third”, an adaptation of the homonymous manga. The film was a great success in Japan, with more than $23 million at the box office in 2015. In Cuba, he shot the po-lice feature film “Vientos de Habana” (2016) and the series “Four Seasons in Havana” (2016), from Netflix, winner of the Platino award. In Spain he also filmed the documentary “Saura(s)”, released in 2017, about filmmaker Carlos Saura, and the drama “Tu Hijo”, distributed by Netflix. In Brazil, he was the director of photography for the films “Como Nosso Pais” (winner of the Gramado Festival in 2017 and the Guarani Prize in 2018), “Ex-Pajé” (awarded at the Berlin Fes-tival in 2018 and at the É Tudo Verdade Festival), “The Last Forest” (winner of the public award at the Berlinale Panorama show in 2021) and “4×100: Correndo por um Sonho” (2021). He also shot the upcoming “A Viagem de Pedro”, the latest film by Laís Bodanzky, which hasn’t been released yet.
https://pjmarquez.com/
