By Giorgio Di Marzo
“From the brow of the crater, Chew Beth gives you a blow to the hearth. What is it? An obsidian eye? A black hole? Or maybe the jagged edge of an abyss?”. Thus starts A Journey Amongst the Water People, a documentary produced by P9 with RAI-Radiotelevisione Italiana, written by Giuseppe Cederna and Paolo Novelli, directed by Paolo Novelli. 30 minutes that narrate a journey throughout Ethiopia following the different aspects and implications of the relationship between water and some tribes.
Like the Borana and Chew Beth, ‘the house of salt’, a small lake as black as hell.
On Thursday 13th December 2007 about 80 people attended the event organised by Italian Nights, and were later involved in an interesting discussion. It was an evening to reflect about the differences between us and peoples living not on another planet, to think how hard but amazing life can be, to observe the day-by-day struggle to drink a glass of muddy water… but despite all of this, one can hear serenity in the voice of the chiefs, one can see a different world in their eyes even though those eyes are now just black, empty holes but full with memories.
We learn how these tribes, sometimes composed of just a few souls, are peaceful but any day may be fighting with another fellow tribe to have access to water. This is an old war, but now it is worsening because of the so-called water crisis: overpopulation, mass consumption, misuse, and water pollution, reduce the availability of drinking water per capita in Africa.
And this is mainly our fault.
Thousands of tribes with their own culture and history, customs and traditions, ceremonies and rites, are all slowly fading away; for their world is changing, fast, and they run the risk to become just a live museum for us White People, mimicking themselves to get paid by the tourists. But what they use the money for? Sadly, to buy weapons…
The journey Paolo Novelli has led us along through his video is not just a journey outside our civilisation, but inside, inside all of us, a quest for the self, for the inner beauty and the inner truth, a trip out of the beaten tracks not to show a new attraction to bored, rich tourists in search of adventure: it is a journey for people in search of their humanity.
This journey around water is just part of an endless tale which sees Africa as an old storyteller and Paolo as a visual poet, images and sounds from a different, wonderful world. Ours.
Copyright 2008 GIORGIOSTUDIO Ltd – All rights reserved
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