film treatment

SYNOPSIS

Deep inside the oldest rock formation on the planet, at the foot of the mountain that houses the earth’s highest waterfall, Kamaracoto Indian Hortensia Berti stands at a crossroads. She wants her children and their children to inherit the traditions of her tribe. But her world, although remote, is influenced by tourism, missionary schooling and Direct-TV. Day by day, the thread to her culture grows thinner, and her answers to the questions of her children more tentative. Deep in her heart she hears fragments of the teachings of her great-grandfather, a legendary chief. To piece those teachings together she must access the minds of the elders, crisscrossing the wide savannahs that border the Amazon forest, to their mud-huts.

As she explores the memories of the elders, Hortensia hears not only the stories of his great-grandfather, but also those of the white explorers who in the mid 20th century “discovered” and documented the great waterfall, Churún Vená to the Kamarakotos and Angel Falls to the rest of the world. 

Set in the Venezuelan Amazon, this is a first-hand, intimate “letter to the world” from a woman in a remote valley accessible only by canoe or small airplane.  It is also a journey into the sublime, as we trek in dugout canoes to the deep canyon that houses the astonishing Angel Falls. 

This film is the first document to unify what have until now been the two separate histories of one of the great marvels of the natural world: the unwritten history of the Kamarakotos and the documented history of the westerners who explored Angel Falls.

This film is sponsored by the New York Foundation for the Arts. Your contribution is tax-decutible.

Visit the THE MAKING OF A CHIEF (formerly WOMEN OF THE FALLS) page at the New York Foudation for the Arts.

Visit the Angel Conservation page for THE MAKING OF A CHIEF (formerly WOMEN OF THE FALLS) and the Kamarakoto Cultural Identity Program.