Aguas del Pastaza (The Waters of the Pastaza) is a beguiling little film. Running at a shade over an hour, it documents the lives of a small tribe of children who live, learn and play on the banks of the river Pastaza, deep in the Amazon rainforest, somewhere on the border of Peru and Ecuador. Throughout almost the whole film, there are no adults present, just the kids. Alves shows them with an affectionate, observational eye. There is no intent to interview them or speak to anyone who might be shaping the way their minds work, in part, one suspects, because it is clear their minds and bodies are shaped more than anything by the world around them, in which they live in a state of seemingly Wordsworthian joy. They climb tees, forage for fruit, hunt for shrimps by night, play football in the teeming rain, paddle down the river in their pirogues, go fishing, cook etcetera. As such this is no more and no less than a vivid fly-on-the-wall portrayal of what life is like for these children, a life that they clearly relish.
As it happens I watched the film with Sñr Amato and his friend, Juanma, who explained that this way of life was one his mother had lived in the Paraguayan selva, not so very long ago. Juanma is a very urbane figure so I had no idea of his rural background. He said that Alves’ film transported him back both to stories his mother told him and his own experiences when he went to stay with family in the jungle, and the sense of wondrous liberty of existing in this environment, an element of the continent’s consciousness that is constantly under threat, (a threat that is latent but never declared in the film). Rather, what we get to see is everything we have already lost and everything that clings on regardless in the face of supposed ‘progress’.
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