Ayênan

A film by Felipe Castelblanco and Lydia Zimmermann (35:00). 2020

‘Ayenan’ is the smallest particle in the universe that jumpstarts life.

This film documents a counter-expedition that follows the upward movement of water throughout its natural cycle, going from the Andean-Amazon foothills to the Atlantic Ocean on the coast of Colombia. Along the way, the journey reveals the traces of a long-forgotten expedition in search of El Dorado and territorial philosophy of Indigenous groups from the region. Climbing up from a river in the lower Amazon to a lake in the upper Andes, members of Ñambi Rimai Media Collective come to a sacred landscape in order to plant water back into the mountain and return a long-lost treasure. Together they create an offering, a ritual, which embodies situated forms of biocultural peace-building between regions, cultures, and non-human worlds.