About movie

Textiles in Ayacucho

Original title Textiles in Ayacucho

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Textiles from the “Artes en Ayacucho” DVD, received the American Anthropological Association’s Best Short Film Award. Shot in the thin air at 16,000 feet in Ayacucho, Peru, it follows the process of textile production from the shearing of alpacas to the dyeing and weaving of wool. “Textiles” is a work of applied visual anthropology. Independent of its ethnographic value, it was made first for wholesalers in Europe and the US to help the people of Ayacucho promote their textile co-op. By showing whole salers how complex and time-consuming the process is, the film helps justify a modestly high price to retailers. With
this primary goal, the film does not pursue a word-based vérité style, but rests entirely on the image, logic and beauty of the Ayacucho textile production process.

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Author/s Peter Biella

Peter Biella directs the Program in Visual Anthropology at San Francisco State University, where his students focus on the creation of applied anthropological films. He directed the award-winning “AIDS in the Barrio” (1989) – the first Spanish language HIV-education work in the US. “El Salvador: Portraits of a Revolution” (camera only) was aired nationally on PBS in 1992. His pathbreaking “Yanomamo Interactive: Ax Fight on CD-ROM” (1997) provided a model for later multimedia work. In 2004 he edited the first CD-ROM version of “Visual Anthropology Review” – a double issue on South African Media. His “Visual Anthropology in a Time of War” (forthcoming) analyzes how media can be used to fight racism and hypermasculine-imperialist mindset. On sabbatical this semester, Biella is finally finishing (after 27 years!) two book/multimedia DVDs about the Ilparakuyo Maasai of Tanzania.

Research Mary Strong
Photography Peter Biella
Sound Jenifer Wolowic
Editing Peter Biella