Donde nacen los escanceles
We’re excited to inform you that we are currently in the production process of the feature-length documentary ‘Where Escancelles Are Born.’ Join us on an exhilarating journey through the mountains of southern Ecuador, where a united community bravely challenges the mining industry. From the heart of their homes, women lead an inspiring resistance, weaving bonds that defend the land and water as sacred treasures. This poignant documentary captures the essence of their fight against corporate power and the deep connection that unites them as a community. Stay tuned for future updates on our project, and join us on this cinematic adventure.
Director
Co-producers
Director of photography
Sound director
Year
2023 – 2024
Genre / Language
Documentary / Spanish
Six years ago, multinational mining companies and the government began to advance activities in the Fierro Urco Mountain Range – Southern Ecuador’s Hydrological Star, which serves as the birthplace of major water sources, feeding the provinces of Loja, El Oro, and the northern departments of Peru. This puts at risk water, biodiversity, life, food sovereignty, the population, and the territory.
Life in the community has been affected by the new dynamics brought by mining, such as internal division, breaking community ties, and contradictorily hindering the organic development of the population.
In the kitchen, the struggle is forged, where resistance becomes more evident, around the fire, pots, and communal food. Women speak of their mountain, their lagoon, of their Pachamama as part of them, their blood runs with the mountain that cries with the lagoon.
The documentary depicts a quest for the intangible significance of water, the ancestral connection, which is tied to the living totality. This connection has been denied to us but is stored in the memory of our protagonists.
To delve into the search for the intangible meaning of water, we will enter kitchens and communal pots as a parallel space, on a smaller scale but of equal social importance as water. Just as water is a communal realm and not a resource, it is also a communal sphere where all those who sit around it share our feelings for the food grown in territories affected by extractive activities. Thus, closing a natural cycle of the products provided by Mother Nature. Women keep the resistance alive in the place where the escanceles are born.
