© Elliot Blumberg

© Elliot Blumberg www.Armilafilm.com “Ya estamos super bien.” -Fernando © Elliot Blumberg www.Armilafilm.com Armila Elliot J. Blumberg Master of Arts, New Media Photojournalism Thesis Advisors Susan Sterner Gabriela Bulisova Michelle Frankfurter May 6, 2014 © Elliot Blumberg www.Armilafilm.com © Elliot Blumberg www.Armilafilm.com © Elliot Blumberg www.Armilafilm.com © 2014 Elliot Blumberg © Elliot Blumberg www.Armilafilm.com Abstract Armila is a cinema vérité documentary film that utilizes a day-in-the-life framework to tell a story of the changing people, culture and environment in an indigenous village. The town Armila lies in the semi-autonomous Guna Yala region Panama (aka Kuna Yala, Cuna Yala and the San Blas Islands) less than five miles from the border with Colombia. Regional pride is ubiquitous, but as the people adopt Western customs, technologies and ideals, parts of their culture erode under economic and technological pressures. Armila explores the tension points between indigenous and Western culture in this community. Utilizing diptychs, it juxtaposes the dualities in the village and measures the impact of their collision on Guna society and the surrounding environment. This work provokes the viewer to consider the effects of globalization, plastic, pollution, tourism and mass media on cultures that still maintain close ties with the natural world. © Elliot Blumberg i www.Armilafilm.com For my grandmother, Mary, who prompted my ambition to pursue an advanced degree. And for my parents, Joseph and Sandra, who gave me the support and tools to see it through. Finally, for my aunt, Dharma, who generously donated time and travel expenses to make this project possible. © Elliot Blumberg ii www.Armilafilm.com Acknowledgments First and foremost, I acknowledge the incredible hospitality and trust that the people of Armila presented to me during my stay. I have never encountered a people so genuine, so humble or so in touch with the spirit of the universe. It has been my honor to work with the Guna. For their contribution to the visual portion of this thesis, I wish to acknowledge two faculty members in particular from the Corcoran College of Art + Design: Susan Sterner and Michael Kleinfeld. From the planning stages of Armila, Susan’s counsel provided avenues for self-evaluation; she helped me bring the film to a more complex, comprehensive and poetic place. She warned me early on not to tell the story of the entire town, to stay away from a surface piece that didn’t characterize the nuances of Guna Yala. Of course, I ignored this advice, but thanks to Susan, I kept in mind the effect of widening a story’s scope on the intimacy it provides the audience. The awareness she led me to helped my edit represent more fully the Guna spirit. It was also through Susan’s counsel that I arrived at the decision to utilize video diptychs throughout the film. Though we still argue about the placement and use of some of these images, I almost always find myself begrudgingly agreeing with her suggestions. In his course, “Nuancing the Story,” Michael Kleinfeld broke down the storytelling elements of Armila. He helped me rebuild the layers to provide an interesting (albeit unconventional) narrative to drape over the ‘day-in-the-life’ structure I adopted for the film. Later on, Michael provided editing advice that helped make the film more aesthetically and phonetically pleasing. Access to his post-production expertise was one of my greatest benefits during the editing stages of thesis. Terrill Mast is a gentleman, a scholar and a musical genius. His music gives Armila a unique flavor. Morrison Mast’s and Amanda Gibson’s friendship and positivity kept me sane during filming. The rest of the CCA+D New Media Photojournalism students were instrumental to shaping the final version of my visual thesis. Being surrounded with such talent spurred me to do my best work. I’m grateful to have enjoyed that opportunity and look forward to the day when I can give back to this community and help cultivate the next crop of new media photojournalists. Both Tanya Paperny and Tyrone Turner provided feedback for the written portions of my thesis. Tanya’s proficiency in research writing is an invaluable asset to NMPJ’s visually oriented student body; Tyrone’s positive attitude and bank of ideas is equally beneficial. Tansy Matthews helped me navigate and narrow the research portion of Armila to provide an easier framework from which to work. © Elliot Blumberg iii www.Armilafilm.com Preface Leatherback sea turtles brought me to Guna Yala. Armila’s short beaches have possibly the fourth largest population of nesting leatherbacks in the world. In the winter of 2012, My friends Morrison Mast and Amanda Gibson were raising money for projects to conserve both the indigenous culture and natural environment; they brought me on to edit and shoot part of their crowd-funding video. It took me an embarrassingly long time to connect the dots and ask to tag along on their next trip to the village. I planned a two-week exploratory voyage with Morrison that would help me determine whether or not there was a story worth telling. It took an hour to decide. As I made a picture of a satellite dish sticking out the side of a stick and grass hut, I realized that this story was bigger than a two-week visit. I decided to return for an additional two months and began planning © Elliot Blumberg iv www.Armilafilm.com Table of Contents vi Thesis statement vii Introduction viii Methodology 1 Chapter 1: An Overview of Indigenous and Western Medical and Spiritual Practices in Armila, Guna Yala 6 Bibliography 7 Chapter 2: Visual research 17 Bibliography 18 Chapter 3: A Day in Armila 31 Conclusion 32 Appendix A 33 Appendix B 34 Curriculum Vitae © Elliot Blumberg v www.Armilafilm.com Thesis Statement: Utilizing a cinema vérité, day-in-the-life framework, Armila explores the tension points between indigenous and Western culture in its namesake village. It juxtaposes the dualities that exist in the community and measures the impact of their collision on Guna society and the surrounding environment. © Elliot Blumberg vi www.Armilafilm.com Introduction Armila is a 600-person village in the indigenous Guna Yala region of Panama. Regional pride is ubiquitous, but as the people adopt Western customs, technologies and ideals, parts of their culture erode under economic and technological pressures. No one opposes access to vaccines, electricity or more durable building materials, but exposure to mass media, plastic and the almighty dollar has forever changed the ancient culture in just a few short decades. Armila explores the tension points between indigenous and Western culture in this community - it juxtaposes the dualities that exist in the village and measures the impact of their collision on Guna society and the surrounding environment. © Elliot Blumberg vii www.Armilafilm.com Methodology Early on, I made it my goal to distill Armila’s most prevailing qualities into elements that would be easily transmitted and digested in a film. The qualities I absorbed most fully were the beauty of the landscape; the destruction of the landscape; the similarities between Armilans and Westerners; and the juxtaposition in Guna society between their traditional indigenous culture and the growing Western culture. Those four elements were never expressed to me directly – they were details that I picked up intuitively. I wanted to give the audience the same experience of discovery, so I decided not to use words; I opted to curate my footage to promote the audience’s absorption of the elements. In regard to Armila’s beauty, it was important early on to make attractive both the landscape and people to create a bond between the subjects and audience. Later on, this bond creates dissonance in the audience when they realize the people are inadvertently destroying the landscape with plastic litter (my second element). Coming from a society that ‘otherizes’ indigenous people and people of the ‘3rd world,’ it was important for me to highlight the similarities between Armilans and Westerners – the third element. Finally, the element that gives Armila a unique identity is the contrast between their indigenous culture and the growing Western culture in their society. This juxtaposition is what intrigued me the most, and I knew it would be the most important and complicated element to express visually. For the last concept, as a means of drawing comparison, I decided to use diptychs. However, I realized that I couldn’t have diptychs just in the scenes that highlight the juxtaposition, so to promote a consistent visual language, I scattered them throughout, each diptych with a different purpose and effect. © Elliot Blumberg viii www.Armilafilm.com Chapter 1: An Overview of Indigenous and Western Medical and Spiritual Practices In Armila, Guna Yala Armila is an indigenous village where the community still comes together to build homes with dirt floors, grass roofs and wooden walls harvested from the surrounding forest. It is the southeastern-most Guna town in the region. Between Armila and Colombia there are two Panamanian towns, Puerto Obaldia and La Miel; Latino populations inhabit both. Roughly 607 people live in Armila, 27 of whom are babies born since January 2013 (Gibson). Electricity, along with satellite television, made it to Armila within the last decade. Electricity arrived in the form of gasoline generators brought by merchants from Colombia (Nabas). More than a dozen families now have access to satellite television. Over the course of two visits, I spent about 12 weeks in Armila and conducted many informal interviews. Amanda Gibson, a friend and anthropologist, conducts her own research in Armila that I have tapped into before its publishing.

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