In Bogota, the siblings explore folk and manouche jazz. They travel to…
Our Song to War
- Description
- Reviews
- Citation
- Cataloging
- Transcript
View on the Pragda STREAM site
In the Colombian village of Bojayá, in 2002, FARC guerrillas committed a massacre. In this poetic, visually stunning film, the town emerges as a mysterious place where people sing as they guide the spirits across a mystic river. This death ritual, Novenario, is to ensure that the angry spirits of the dead don’t return—a reconciliation between the world of the living and the lost souls that roamed the Colombian landscape during 50 years of war.
"Exploring the territory of the village of Bojaya serves as the basis of the Colombian-Belgian filmmaker Juanita Onzaga’s narrative in Our Song to War– the perception of a reality permeated by the irrational, the persistence of archaic patterns, the survival of the sacred, all tied together by an exceptional sense of imagery." - Clermont Ferrand, Short film festival editorial
Citation
Main credits
Onzaga, Juanita (film director)
Onzaga, Juanita (film producer)
Stevens, Jan (film producer)
Despeer, Sofie (film producer)
Other credits
Cinematography & editing, Juanita Onzaga; music, Las Musas de Pogue.
Distributor subjects
Culture + Identity; Short Films; South America; Religion + Spirituality; Environment + Sustainability; Geography; Indigenous Peoples; Latin American Studies; AnthropologyKeywords
experimental,children,youth,war,Colombia,spirits,after life,life,rituals,locals,short film,latin american studies,caribbean american studies,island studies,latin american culture,latin american history,latin american politics,caribbean american culture,caribbean american history,caribbean american politics,latin american languages,latin american and caribbean studies,hispanic american studies,hispanic people,hispanic culture,hispanic politics,anthropologically,cultural anthropology,forensic anthropology,anthropologist,human nature,physical anthropology,ethnocentric,ethnography,functionalism,cultures,societies,human people,human society,functionalism,globalization,ideology,pragmatism,dogmatism,social change,society,geography,location,place,country,location,physical place,terrain,spatial awareness,territory,map,place,space,maps,cartography,countries,cities,mountains,territories,states,nations,borders,boundaries,topology,topography,indigenous peoples,indigenous people,indigenous,native,native people,native peoples,aboriginal people,aboriginal,aborigine,indigene,indigeneity,tribes,tribal,tribal people,tribal peoples,south america,south american countries,countries in south america,argentina,bolivia,brazil,chile,colombia,ecuador,guyana,paraguay,peru,suriname,uruguay,venezuela,south american politics,south american culture,south american cuisine,south american education,south america in media,south american languages,south america history,short films,short film,short,non-feature,run time,short run time,running time,short running time,live-action short,documentary short,animated short,live-action short film,documentary short film,animated short film,culture,identity,identity politics,culture wars,left wing,right wing,intersectionality,identity groups,civilization,literacy,humanism,cancel culture,online culture,cultural revolution,cultural diffusion,culture shock,popular culture,pop culture,material culture,cultural capital,cultural assimilation ,religion,spirituality,organized religion,soul,spiritual beliefs,religious beliefs,belief systems,branches of religion,religious sects,sects,gods and goddesses,monotheism,theism,pantheism,polytheism,spiritual awakening,environment,environmental,environmentalism,climate,climate change,global warming,habitat,ecosystem,ecology,eco,earth,planet,water,sustainable,sustainability,deforestation,agriculture,green,green economy,our song to war,Eliseo Pino Chaverra,Camilo Chaverra Cordoba,Roberto Erlin Machado Cordoba; "Our Song to War"; Pragda Films
00:00:59.820 --> 00:01:03.340
How many steps can I walk
into the jungle
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before I disappear?
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Here we say
you have to be more careful
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with the living
than with the dead.
00:01:28.880 --> 00:01:30.660
When did the war start?
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Here nobody knows anymore.
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It has always been like this.
00:01:44.240 --> 00:01:47.680
Have you asked yourself
how it is to live a war?
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Behind our eyes,
remain the traces of our story,
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of a night and day
filled with bullets and fear.
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This place was our home.
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This church, our refuge.
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People call it the massacre of Bojaya.
00:02:18.880 --> 00:02:21.800
Here,
we don't name it anymore.
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These lands, these waters,
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don’t belong to war anymore.
00:02:34.920 --> 00:02:37.120
The waters of this river have told us:
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"only in the darkest nights,
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shall we find the reasons
to keep on fighting."
00:02:44.840 --> 00:02:50.320
Now, we have to take back from war
what has always belonged to us.
00:04:21.100 --> 00:04:24.660
My mom says
I can’t swim in the river at night.
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There are strange creatures
that can seize me forever.
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I asked her,
is it crocodiles?
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She said no,
it is something worse.
00:04:37.200 --> 00:04:39.760
What what can be worse
than a crocodile?
00:04:45.680 --> 00:04:47.440
Maybe a pirate?
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Sometimes I don’t go to school
and stay wandering in the harbor.
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If you look into
the swirling water
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deep inside appear eyes
that look back at you.
00:05:13.700 --> 00:05:15.500
I thought it was mermaids,
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but my granny told me once
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it’s the crocodile-men
living underwater like fish
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but during night time they come up
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and haunt little girls, like me.
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But what if there are lost souls
living inside the crocodile-men?
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What if they’re also inside the fish?
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Oh you killed it!
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You should have seen, he shot the stone
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and hit the lizard on the neck,
it did like this.
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I said "I have good aim"
and I threw it, bam!
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Are we gonna go fishing?
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But we're missing Walter!
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Let's go search for him
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I have to get my fish hook.
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Do you think there are fruits in here?
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There are the graves from the massacre.
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There are like 45, no?
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Did I tell you? The son of... Solito.
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He came here and saw a broken grave
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and took out a skull.
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That was Chuchito. Yeah with Cuchilin.
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They took it out,
it´s still there somewhere.
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It was that grave over there,
it´s all destroyed.
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I didn´t touch that skull.
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They were playing with it.
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Once by night
the owner of the skull appeared.
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I was sleeping,
I woke up and went to the toilet
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And something touched me like this,
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but there was nobody.
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So I went to my brother's bed
and slept with him.
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Another night
we were sleeping with my bro,
00:07:49.080 --> 00:07:51.880
and something pulled my bro up
like this, upwards,
00:07:52.280 --> 00:07:54.620
and I had to pull him back down!
00:07:55.160 --> 00:07:58.080
My brother flew up and then down,
it was so scary.
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I don´t know which being that was.
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All those nights
we didn´t have light at home.
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“Why did you have to go?”
that's how people cry here.
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I cry, but I don´t like crying.
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When I go to the Novenario ritual
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Where they are celebrating
the death of someone.
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Celebrating?
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You know what I mean.
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When they start singing I think,
why can't I sing like them?
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So I can also sing to my dead family,
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it makes me sad.
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“Ay! Why did you have to go,
I have loved you so much
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After we have cried for you,
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in this world
there shouldn't be dead anymore.
00:09:13.000 --> 00:09:18.020
You that we need,
please get up from your grave.”
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I don't know which
are the graves of my family.
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There is my family, just in front.
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Well, I don't know
where my dead are.
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One day a man died.
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The people of the village
did the Novenario ritual
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and the cantaoras started singing.
00:10:51.500 --> 00:10:57.260
His grandson looked down
and saw that the water started rising.
00:10:58.260 --> 00:11:03.800
So he asked his grandma,
"Granny, why does the water rise?"
00:11:05.080 --> 00:11:08.440
She answered
“Son, when we start singing,
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the spirit arrives here,
he drinks the water because he is tired,
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and then he floats over the river
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towards the afterlife."
00:11:40.480 --> 00:11:48.200
It makes me be scared
and enfolds my heart
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seeing myself dead and lying
00:11:57.060 --> 00:12:02.120
in the center of my house.
00:12:03.520 --> 00:12:11.960
I know tomorrow I will go
from this world into the next one.
Distributor: Pragda Films
Length: 14 minutes
Date: 2018
Genre: Expository
Language: Spanish
Grade: Middle School, High School, College, Adult
Color/BW:
Closed Captioning: Available
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