Spears From All Sides

Showings

Roxie Theatre Sun, Jun 2, 2019 12:16 PM
Roxie Theatre Tue, Jun 4, 2019 7:01 PM
Film Info
Director:Christopher Walker
Film Category:Social Justice
Environment
Latino
Running Time:90 min.
Country:Ecuador

Description

Since the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors, Ecuador’s Waorani tribe, have defended their Amazon rainforest with spears. In the 1950’s American missionaries cleared the way for oil companies to enter Waorani lands. Now 70% of Ecuador’s Amazon, home to some 12 tribes, has been divided into oil blocks, polluting one of the most bio diverse rainforests of the planet. Only one small tribe, the Waorani, have successfully fought to keep oil off most of their land.

 

25 years ago, director Christopher Walker went to the Amazon to tell the Waorani's story in the documentary film TRINKETS & BEADS (AMPAS Outstanding Documentary, Best Cultural Survival Film, Mountainfilm, Best Documentary Paris Environmental Film Festival) Now, Ecuador has started to auction off the their last virgin rainforest to the international oil industry – including the Yasuni National Park, thought to contain more species per acre than any where else on earth. At the end of 2014, Walker returned to Ecuador to see if the Waorani could still win their fight against big oil. Filming over three years, up to the imminent auction of Waorani oil Block 22.

 

SPEARS FROM ALL SIDES follows the young, charismatic Waorani activist Opi as he tells the dramatic story of a vehement, community based resistance by tribal communities in one of the most remote and beautiful areas of the world. It reveals the duplicity of the Ecuadorean government and the oil companies in their attempts to defeat the Waorani at all costs, including the cooption and subsequent betrayal of the former Waorani leader Moi – the hero of the previous film. Out of disaster, Opi sees a possibility of hope – regaining their autonomy which they lost with the arrival of the missionaries 60 years ago.

 

SPEARS FROM ALL SIDES, besides being a gripping story following action and events as they unfold , demonstrates the complex battles at the frontlines of climate change which we rarely are able to see on film. -JM