you stick your nose into the contradictions around you, W things tend to happen. For documentary filmmaker Nettie Wild the - proof is in her latest project, A Place Called Chiapas. =. ~.;The 90-minute feature premieres Sept. 18 and runs to Sept. 24 at the Fifth Avenue Cinemas in Vancouver. It airs nationally on CBC-TV at 8 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 22. Wild — who grew up in West Vancouver — filmed eight months in the jungle of south- ern Mexico. Her goal going in was to docu- ment some moments in the time of an indige- nous uprising. Subcomandante Marcos, the enigmatic guerrilla leader of the Mayan Zapatista army, had managed to get the attention of the Mexican military by challenging the Mexican government. The Zapatista National Liberation Army seized five towns snd some 500 ranches in the impoverished state of Chiapas on Jan. 1, 1994. The action coincided with the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement. The Zapatistas, who take their name in honor of Emiliano Zapata, the hero of Mexico's 1910 revolution, paint NAFTA as a death sen- tence for the indigenous people of Mexico. The revolutionaries, primarily Mayan Tzatziles, Tzeltales, Tojotabales and Chals, claim they speak for more than 1,000 Zapatista communi- ties and are calling for indigenous rights, health care, education and land. Techno-savvy Marcos, whom the govern- ment identifies as a professor of philosophy and communications from Mexico City, disseminat- ed his revolutionary notions of reform to the rest of the world on the Internet. The actions of Marcos and his followers have been described by some as the world’s first NEWS EDITOR Friday, September 11, 1998 — North Shore News — 13 : | IS wee oe d é NORTH SHORE NEWS ENTERTAINMENT & STYLE GUIDE ‘A Zapatista guerriiia hugs her child in Chiapas. post-modern revolution. They have largely been able to keep at bay the tens of thousands of Mexican troops surrounding the. Zapatista terri- tory. Wild was intrigued by the Zapatistas. The litical situation she found was anything but lack and white. At the heart of Wild’s film story are 2,000 indigenous villagers who had bought into Marcos’ potent dream of liberty. The villagers found themselves forced from their homes by para-military “Peace and Justice” death squads aligned with the government. In focusing on their plight, Wild reveals the ineffectuality of the Zapatistas in being able to deliver any real protection to the villagers. ‘The church, thrust into the role of negotiat- ing between the government and the Zapatistas, shows itself to be an ambiguous power broker. Farmers displaced in the uprising, who could in less deft hands easily be painted as former oppressors who finally got what was coming to them, are shown to have paid a real human cost. Said Wild, “The reality is, that when I actu- ally got down there it was really important to ask the tough questions as well as the easy ones. It was important to go for the grey areas. Instead of back away and go, ‘oops, our heroes don’t look so heroic anymore, it’s getting clear as mud,” I find if you stick your nose right into those contradictions the piece immediately starts to speak to people not in the language of propaganda.” Wild mines the human drama inherent to the conflict of contradictions. As a documentary maker it’s a powerful place to be. “You have a let’s-get-lost attitude with the audience as you start to go into a very complex situation instead of ‘1’m going to sort this out and I'm going to tic it up with a litde string and Mexico is going to become a simple place.’ I don’t think so. “T think any place is complicated once you get into the culture and the politics, bur Mexico has got to take the cake. Even Mexicans admit that it’s really complicated.” As an outsider with only rudimentary Spanish, Wild ¢ ignificant challenges. But she was not unfamiliar with the dynamics of indigenous struggle. In 1989-90 she released Rustling of Leaves: Inside the Philippine Revolution. Her 1993 film, Blockade, chronicied a native standoff over logging in B.C. She went into Chiapas with Mexican guides. Wild’s talented crew included Canadian docu- mentary cinematographer and producer Kirx Tougas, producer and production manager Betsy Carson, editor and co-writer Manfred Becker, camera assistant Robin Lupita Bain, sound designer Velcrow Ripper and sound recordist Jesus Sanchez Padilla. It was a difficult film to shoot. The stakes were high for her subjects, literally a matter of Photo DOCUMENTARY director Nettie Wild with Major Moses, a Zapatista querrilia commander In Chiapas, Mexico. life and death in some cases. There was fear and plenty of loathing. “Part of che whole dance down there is get- ting to know people, getting people to trust you enough to take you in.” Who you enter 3 community with sends sig- nals to everybody else. Wild’s crew went into one community with refugees who were attempting to return home. “You walk in with your camera and a bunch of villagers who had just been turfed our — you're making some kind of a statement. “We were really fascinated with those peo- ple. As we started to film them more and more it became tougher and tougher because lots of people wanted us to stop filming, nut the feast Contradiction is a condition of life in A Place Called. Chiapas af which were the people who were yelling at us when we first arrived and who then stened my film crew.” . A Place Called Chiapas saw its world pre- miere in February at the Berlin Film Fesuval. Wild was there. The German audience packed the theatre to the roof and then some. “We had everybody,” said Wild. Demonstrators fulminated against the Mexican government. The German police turned up and tried to arrest the demonstrators. The Mexican consul arrived with two body- guards, The media arrived and then a mariachi band rolled up followed by a theatre company. “Ic was really wild. A lot of the audience had pierced noses, pierced everything,” Wild said. Tt turns out that the target marker for the film is young adults between 18 and 25 years of age. Wild got a sense of the tilt of the audience when she first entered Zapatista territory the year prior to filming. . “You're just as likely co run into a group of Iialians as you are a group of indigenous peo- ple. A lot of these people are really young because young adults are the people who answer the calls. Over history that’s who’s done it. Right now the call is going out from ihe Zapatistas over the Internet.” Wild admits to embarking upon a project with a pretty strong perspective. She argues that virtually all of us have them, whether we acknowledge it or not. “IE think the guys and gals who give us the six o'clock news are coming from a very specific erspective. It’s delivered as the voice of God, ut it’s not. The whole business of objectivity in journalism, I have a lot of fun with. I just think it’s unattainable.” She sees her job as a story teller and finds sto- ries about people putting it on the line compelling. “TI have to be able to tell that story well to people who ordinarily don’t know about it. “T want to pick them up and throw them down some really intriguing path that they would never have gone belore. So that at the end they go, ‘Whoa, where am I now?’ Maybe they just finish their pepcorn and walk out the dooy and that’s thélast they think of it. Maybe other people take it further.”