Film short abstract:

Kitchwa midwives from Amupakin centre meet in an early morning Wayusa ceremony. They tell stories and dreams, dance and sing. The film takes a multispecies, sensorial approach, attentive to the rich animacy of the rainforest human lives are entangled with, to illustrate a story of becoming shaman.

Film long abstract:

The Amupakin centre in Ecuador is a community of ten Kitchwa women who practice traditional medicine and midwifery. Their knowledge sees physical and spiritual healing as inseparable and their power is drawn from the more-than-human world of the selva, rainforest. In an early morning Guayusa ceremony, members of a family or community wake up at dawn to sit around the fire and share dreams, events, stories and music. The film tells the story of Mama Maruja and how she was made aware of her shaman powers by a Boa she encountered in the rainforest. Starting from the story of this encounter, the film uses images and sounds to illustrate the importance of more-than-human connections, as the midwives’ knowledge and actions are conferred, determined and limited by the more-than-human animal spirits that Kitchwa live in close proximity to. Land Full of Boa uses a form of sensorial essay-film montage to keep this world of multispecies agency and personhood present while narrating Maruja’s story.