Patacancha

Our original production plan relied heavily on getting to know a lady from the museum´s collective in Huilloc, spending a few days with her in her home and letting her become one of three or four major characters in the film. Our first day of filming was at the Huilloc school that the museum built, with about 30 women from the collective present, sort of a casting session for us, and after the President spoke, another lady asked to speak - she was animated and interesting, and we figured she´d be perfect.

We translated the footage from Quechua with Miguel, and after this session, we asked if it was possible to stay with this lady for a couple nights in Huilloc. He said sure, and we arranged to go a week later. Whe we got there, however, we had been placed with a guy named Gabriel, who we talked about in another entry. He was cool, but wasn´t our character. We had her name written down, and walked around town trying to find her. We were sent to her house, but she was in Cusco for the week. We got to know her family though, and learned a lot from them about satellite TV and the informal people´s court in the area, Rondos Campesinos. We left Huilloc with some great interviews, but not a real portrait of somebody like we had wanted.

Our schedule filled up, and we decided we had enough characters for the film - Klever, Sonia, Miguel, Joaquin, and about 20 others who we had spent a few hours with. But the last week, we decided we really needed a portrait of a lady from Huilloc or Patacancha who was involved in a weaving collective - a lot of our film focuses on these, and we still didn´t have any personalities to represent it. We were talking with Louisa about this, and she recommended a friend of her´s named Elena from Patacancha - she had her husband had just started a ´tourism vivencial´- a room in their house for tourists - and we would be the first to stay there. She was also a great weaver, but not a part of the museum´s collective - there´s some issues with the musuem in Patacancha among some people, and there´s another separate collective that has formed. While we were talking with Louisa about contacting them, Elena and her husband stopped by her home - a great coincidence, one of many many many that have happened. We arranged to stay with them Wednesday night, and meet them at 3 that day at the cancha, the football field in the middle of town.

Albizu Maya and I left Cusco Wed morning and Albizu and I got a taxi to Patacancha - it was our last week, so Maya stayed with the little camera to get some ´tourist camera´ shots of OTT. We got to the field on a very small path hanging on the side of a mountain, and Elena was there waiting for us. We walked up the hill to her house and into our room on the first floor - extremely nice, brand new beds still in the plastic, a table and chairs, some symbols and such painted in a line along the wall - and a brand new bathroom with a toilet, sink and hot shower. Much much nicer than Huilloc, and even my place in OTT. Their room was on the second floor, separated from ours by logs with cracks in them, and accessed by a ladder and a ghetto platform. The house was beautiful though, painted yellow, with arched roofs made of the same red tiles you find in OTT and Cusco, not tin like most of the other houses. Her husband Juan was working on the Inka Trail, so she was there alone with her three kids. Better for us, bc before, when we´d asked her questions, Juan answered.

Albizu and I first went down to the high school, just below the field, which had been built 5 years ago by an NGO from Holland that has a hotel in Cusco. It´s by far the nicest school around, probably in the whole of the Sacred Valley - they have 16 teachers, the rooms all have computers, they have a video program, and they buildings are beautiful, yellow, about ten of them in a sort of semicircle. They have environmental education with a big field for planting. We met the principal, sat down with him in his office, told him we were with the museum, and asked for an interview. He was a very intense, interesting guy, shook your hand with his other arm on your forearm for extra emphasis - but he had some beef with the museum. That didn´t help us. I told him ´soy no el museó´and tried to get around it, but it was kind of impossible. He asked what the ´condition´for the interview was, if he was going to get paid, so we just left. Disappointing, bc he was definitely a character, but one less to edit.

We went back up to the house, past a campsite with 11 tents for a group doing the Lares trek thru the town - in the summer months, there´s usually at least one group camping in the town everynight. We sat with Elena in her kitchen, a very dark sooty room with a huge brick and mud stove fire and no chimney, kind of like a cave. There was a black plastic sheet hanging in the middle, and behind there were lots of guinea pigs squeaking and popping. We sat on small stools and rolled the camera for about three hours - Albizu led a conversation with her about lots and lots of things, the history of the town, her marriage, weaving techniques, where to sell, what get the best price, tourism in the town of course, her parents, her school, her kids. Her husband´s brother came in for dinner - some soup with potatoes and carrots, then more potatoes, different kinds, really fresh and flavorful, but still, potatoes. We had a lot of tea, got very cold even with the fire, and finally went to our room. She followed with all of her weavings and displayed them for us. I bought a scarf for my dad that she had made last week, it took her two days.

The next morning, she and her friend constructed a loom in front of the house, which they do everyday, and they started weaving. We filmed all this for about an hour, then said goodbye and hitched back to OTT. We filmed more of Lucho in his studio, the firing of the pieces he had made, the final touches and paints. We hung out with Luis all afternoon, played chess and watched The Incredibles. I took him around the alleys, into some places I had never been, including a really nice hostel with movies and huge couches called Chaski Wasi. I took the camera and filmed as it got dark in the alleys, then we met Bill and Michelle at the nicest restaurant in town, Mayupata, with candles and a fire and pretentiously decorated plates of food. Louisa met us there with her daughter, Nina, one and a half. After, we went to Chaski Wasi, Louisa and Lucho came along, they both knew the owner, Cati. We had Pisco with orange juice and grenadine and got really tired - went home around 10.

The next morning, Maya and I went to Macchu Picchu. Huge money for the train, huge money for the entrance tickets, big money for the bus to the site from Aguas Calientes. We had issues getting our camera in, it looked too professional, but I showed them my student card and they just made us leave the tripod. We stayed for five hours, wandering around the city, filming tour groups as they explained things. The most interesting part for me were the rooms to the right of Wayna Picchu, with rocks piled in the courtyards, lots of unfinished bedrooms.

We got back around dark and packed and said goodbye to our families. We left early the next morning, after saying goodbye to Sonia and the Hearts Cafe, our meeting point almost every morning.

We got to Cusco, found a hostel for the night and went to the Plaza de Armas, where the anti-protest protest was just starting. Hundreds of people were there, lots in their traditional clothes, the others in their maitre´d or hotel uniforms, there was a parade of dancers, lots of signs and posters, Keep the Peace, Don´t Mess with the Tourists - then about an hour of speeches from people from all different sectors of tourism, lots of different towns. Really really perfect for our film, it was great to hear all this. Klever was supposed to speak, but he and his folks from Cachiccata arrived late - disappointing. After the speeches, we met up with him, interviewed two presidents from other towns in the network, some volunteers from Lima who were working in Chilca teaching English, and a lawyer for the network, who gave a great interview about how the network benefits everyone in the towns. We went to Jack´s Cafe, the model for Sonia´s Hearts Cafe, had really great food, then met Fiona at her office for another interview and laid out our itinerary for our week of travel. We went to El Molino for more tapes - we´ve shot over 50 hours now - and then went to Rafo´s house, where we hung out with he and Angel and Albizu all night, watched Borat which we bought at El Molino and they had never heard of. The next morning, we took the bus to Puno, where we are now. Maya´s feeling really ill with stomach problems, she´s cracked open the antibiotics she brought in anticipation, and hopefully we´ll make it to Arequipa tomorrow.