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July 15, 2010

Iquitos

1. The director of this documentary I'm shooting brought down a copy of Fitzcarraldo, and I watched it last night for the first time in a long while. There's some dynamic shift that occurs when one recognizes a location in a film, and it's only intensified when that location was until recently completely alien. What was once abstractly exotic is suddenly tactile, pinioned to a periphery that is bigger than the screen. The blanket of humidity and heat, for example. The stench of sweat and trash and filth that mingles over the course of a morning with dead flesh. The ex-pats over whom the city lords a primitive appeal. The dirt, the grime, the sinking histories, the clouds of exhaust and, beyond that crumbling balustrade, the river.

2. We were well into the jungle, carrying one camera and a set of sticks deeper and deeper into the brush (and by deeper I mean with my city parlance perhaps a single kilometer inward - it doesn't take much to impress me). I was glad we didn't have a dolly and track with us. Our guide stopped to show us a tree, and as we stood there learning about the properties of its bark we heard the sound of a creek burbling in the distance. Which there was, but strange, we thought, that we hadn't heard it before. It grew louder in our ears as we spoke, as if it were suddenly rushing harder and faster. And then louder still, growing now not in force but in proximity. It was physically moving closer to us, and closer still, and it was no longer a creek at all but a river, cutting a strong and sudden swathe through the jungle. Then it was upon us, but it came swelling not from around our feet but from the canopy over our heads.

3. We hired two policemen to escort us down into the slums, where the neighborhoods stand on stilts above the high water marks. Children ducked after us, watching tentatively and then gradually growing brave and tiptoeing in front of the camera. They giggled and laughed and began to show off. We stole their souls, every last one of them.

Posted by David Lowery at July 15, 2010 10:54 PM