10 · 07 · 07

Cochochi is a simple and very humane story starred by two children from the Sierra Tarahumara

Doris Morales/Translated by Vicente Castañar

[imagen]To get to be intimate with a community like the Tarahumaras may seem complicated, but to Cochochi’s film makers, Laura Amelia Guzmán and Israel Cárdenas, it was not complicated at all, and we can see this in the film. They first met the children who are now the main characters of the story, these children were really interested in participating on a film, even though they knew nothing about filming or cameras. Laura Amelia Guzmán mentioned:

“It wasn’t complicated working with children, we just arrived and we immediately met them because they are guides, they took us to see many places, so we felt like working with them, and we started to do tryouts with the camera. The children’s community saw us working with the children and so we gained their respect and then they started to get more involved in the project; of course there were people that didn’t like the idea, but we just didn’t work with those.”

Cochochi means land of pine trees, it is the place where Antonio and Evaristo, the children, live. This film is about the various aspects the inhabitants of this area in Sierra Tarahumara in Chihuahua live through. The movie is about a journey the kids take in order to give medicines to a really an elderly couple who lives far away, the children take their grandpa’s horse without permission. During their long journey one can perceive the beautiful sceneries of the sierra, but the spectator will also notice the extreme poverty some people live in on this digital technology era.

Israel Cardenas talked about how long it took them to do the film: “it took us two years since we met the children until the first copy of the movie came out. We were under a lot of pressure because we had to film in ever-changing weather, and so the sceneries would really change, so filming on time was our biggest worry.”

“Cochochi’s story emerged one day when we were lost and we found the children-guides, we talked to them and they were really curious about the cameras. They played with one, they filmed each other and we suggested to them that we could make a small story so they could see what filming was all about. So the children were thinking about their stories while riding their horses,” then Laura Amelia interrupted:

"We got to know them better and we understood that education was very important in their community, they spend a long time at school and it was at that point of time where they were about to finish elementary school and they didn’t know what they were going to do afterwards. Another aspect that really motivated us into making the film was that they mature really young, they have to make a really important choice after finishing elementary school; they have to decide if they either continue studying or if they work. Studying is really hard there because they would have to travel a long way in order to go to school. This responsibility of a 13 year old motivated me to start writing the script. Meanwhile we visited new places and we liked some and we decided to include them in our film, so we started to shape the script.” Israel Cardenas added: “yes, some things we wrote at the beginning of our visit and some other ones we just wrote right before filming them.”

Cochochi is produced by Canana and Buena onda, Pablo Cruz, spokesperson of the former, talked about their interest in supporting films about real indigenous issues, non clichés. They supported this film because it was simple and it had a clear point of view.

Cochochi won the FIPRESCI award at Toronto’s 2007 Film Festival; this is the first time the film is shown in Mexico. It was exhibited in a room full of special guests, including the five children that star on the film. The children were received warmly with applauses, the public de