My Land (2009)

• 81%
• 2009
• Documentary
• Jason Burlage

Heavy mist hangs over the towering Peruvian mountains as a young subsistence farmer, Feliciano, his wife Locrecia, and their small son Royer till their fertile land. Farming the fields above the Sacred Valley in southern Peru is all the indigenous people of Mullacas know - that and the taste of the local fermented corn beverage, chicha. Though theirs appears at first glance to be a peaceful life, isolation and lack of schooling have given rise to feelings of social inequality and an increase in alcoholism. So while he values the beauty of their surroundings, Feliciano wants his son, as his father wanted him, to move to the city so he can get an education and have a better life. Marking director Jason Burlage's feature debut, this moving documentary chronicles the young family's struggles through the planting season and Feliciano's more lucrative work as a porter along the Incan trails to Machu Picchu. These days, only a small percentage of indigenous Peruvians farm, as one in three members of the population now lives in Lima -sixty percent of whose residents occupy the slums. Yet among mountain communities, the belief that life is better in the city is widely held - and thus the traditions of "planting according to the stars," as their fathers and their fathers' fathers taught them, are slowly disappearing. The crucial practice known as ayni, for instance, or communal reciprocity in the form of such acts as plowing one another's fields, is being lost. Through such unsettling details, Burlage paints a vivid portrait of the complexities facing the future of rural communities throughout Peru.