Land invasion, Illegal logging, and the enslavement of native populations are portrayed. However, the miniseries avoids the white gaze from producers and directors by centring the effects of these different types of destruction from the perspectives of those affected most. It also touches on evangelization, prejudice, adaptation to the so-called civilized world, war among Indigenous communities, and other arduous aspects of Indigenous realities that are well represented in the series that covers decades in the region.

The problems faced by the Amazonian region mentioned above are just a few approaches in the series, showing the outcomes they have on the region and the people, the damage they are capable of causing, and how they still remain invisible to the outside world that portrays it as just paradisiac or exotic. The fires in the Amazon that are taking over the news, alongside climate change and human rights activism, help make Green Frontier part of the zeitgeist.

One of the main ways that the show subverts the patriarchal narrative through its protagonist. The audience witnesses how Detective Poveda is perceived by those around her. Del Río gives a strong performance as a law enforcement agent who has to do the right thing while dealing with a morally corrupted and sexist police force, showing how stressful, demanding, and burning this profession can be.

Through the eight-episode arc, the law agent not only unravels the investigation but goes deeper into her connection to the Amazonian forest; therefore, ‘Green Frontier’ has an interesting character arc making Poveda more than just the politically correct stereotype of the “female strong lead”.

This series isn’t just about having a strong female lead and how different she acts from others. When attacked by a once trusted character, Poveda has to fend off for herself. Although she doesn’t flinch about responding to aggressions with violence, she doesn’t in any way display pleasure in it or descend into a berserk rage.

Violence in the series comes as naturally as other acts and emotions. Nevertheless, the aftereffects linger on the characters in a more humane and straining way, especially when portrayed with facial expressions and silence. Latin America is the most violent region in the world, and in ‘Green Frontier,’ it lurks behind the trees or city corners, a feeling explored by camera angles, lighting, and soundtrack with expertise and drawing the viewer into this bleak world.

The solitude of being a cop out of her precinct and surrounded by others who cannot be trusted, feelings augmented by being a female cop, is subtly represented in the colour of the walls of Poveda’s hotel room. Although from a calming light pink pastel tone, they are coldly devoid of emotion, furthering the sense of loneliness and awkwardness experimented by the character. The worn-out paint also signals how damaging this profession can psychologically be. Such imagery contrasts with the native people who come as part of the jungle that embraces them.

Other main questions into play

Nelson Camayo, playing Detective Poveda’s local partner, Reynaldo Bueno, brings the undertones of living in both worlds: a law enforcer and an Indigenous community member in a place where many people have shady interests or are just trying to get by.

Another asset is veteran Marcela Mar (Hermana Raquel), who plays a supporting role, portraying a sweet but condescending and troubled missionary. The Indigenous couple played by Ángela Cano (Ushe), and Miguel Dionisio Ramos (Yua) gives a three-dimensional depth and layered look at Indigenous lives, lore, and society.

Throughout cinema and TV history, Indigenous characters have been portrayed in many productions, but Yua and Ushe show a side of them that they have yet to be seen. The cameras and narrative capture their nudity in a natural light. The couple also embodies how real Indigenous tribes see themselves as the guardians of nature and its knowledge and keepers of dying ways.

The war among Indigenous communities lends complexity to the Indigenous players. Although they are united by race and geography, they are different when considering culture, lore, behaviour patterns, philosophy, and ways of approaching life. ‘Green Frontier’ goes into a space rarely presented in mainstream productions, even from later Latin American productions.

In ‘Green Frontier,’ sex is an intrinsic part of people’s lives, and it is perceived by Latin American eyes, which differs from sexual observations by Anglo-Saxon creators. The sex and sensuality don’t resemble softcore pornography and hold a naturality that aggregates to the storytelling process.

Created by Diego Ramírez Schrempp, Mauricio Leiva-Cock, and Jenny Ceballos and co-directed by Ciro Guerra, Laura Mora, and Jacques Toulemonde, the cinematography is one of its main strengths which was conducted by Felipe Linares, it heightens the beauty and richness of the Amazonian flora and also the systematic depredations it suffers while portraying the small towns with a more erratic view corroborating the poverty in those areas and enhancing the storytelling aspects in an immersive manner which can be expected in a production from Guerra who helmed Academy Awards Best Foreign Language Film from the 2016 ceremony ‘Embrace of the Serpent’ (2015).

‘Green Frontier’ has attractive tones of Magic Realism, a style of fiction that blends the realistic and sometimes gritty scenarios of modern life while adding magical elements, a movement tightly associated with Latin American Literature having in Colombian Nobel Prize Winner Gabriel García Márquez its most known name and gives a peculiar flavour to the show.

Magical realism applies more to Indigenous peoples than it does to city-living characters. The jungle, with its dense appearance, presents a more mysterious place than one with modern life resources, and it also brings more of the unique myths to broader audiences.

In 2018, HBO’s sci-fi series ‘Westworld’ (2016 – 2022) episode “Kiksuya” focused on Native American androids mostly spoken in Lakota, becoming a welcomed addition to TV history. More than a hidden gem in Netflix, ‘Green Frontier’ is a narrative that also adds to Indigenous TV history and exposes the complexities of the South American Indigenous situation, which would probably feel different if shot through American lenses.

Also Read: Three Pines: The Unsung Detective Series Shedding Light on Indigenous Pain

The post Hidden Gems: Netflix’s ‘Green Frontier’ Brings a Solid Female-Driven Narrative to the Amazon Forest appeared first on Big Picture Film Club.

Noisecat acts as a point-of-view character who deals with generational trauma inside Indigenous peoples’ communities as his father, Ed Archer Noisecat, grew up at the St. Joseph Mission, an Indian Residential School that served as the scenario to many stories of abuse against Indigenous children.

The documentary also follows the Indigenous woman, Charlene Belleau, who investigates these stories to give a closer look at those who were members of their community in the past and present. We also see the story of Elder Chief Rick Gilbert, who, although wronged by the Catholic Church, is still attached to this faith and struggling to process what happened during his childhood. At the same time, he travelled alongside other Canadian Indigenous leaders to the Vatican to meet Pope Francis. Another passage we follow is the uphill battle of Chief Willie Sellars, who has organized and led the inquiry into St. Joseph’s history.

A scene that helps understand how systematic and normalized the violence is propagated by such institutions is when an interviewee reveals how the abuse happened to generations of Indigenous peoples at these boarding schools because his grandmother was abused by Catholic priests, as was his mother. He couldn’t escape the same fate.
The image of a crumbling statue of the Virgin Mary holding baby Jesus serves as an allegory to the story presented in this picture, as the Catholic religious structure has not only failed Canada’s Indigenous peoples but has also violated them sexually and emotionally living asunder those who are attacked, their communities, and future generations without any sort of reparation beyond expressing regret.

The Indian Residential schools started to operate back in 1894, most run by the Catholic Church, in a way to “get rid of the Indian problem.” 193 schools were funded in Canada, and the last closed in 1997. In the current cultural scenario, there is a demand that those who should tell the stories in such cases are members of said communities. This line of thought pays in ‘Sugarcane’ as the viewer can follow the process of Julian Brave Noisecat working the painful narratives that affect his life, in particular those from his father, and how they weigh in the way the documentary unfolds before the eyes of the viewer.

The author’s presence avoids Indigenous experiences falling under the condescendence of a “tourist” visiting these people’s worst moments while aiming for an empty prize in a film festival and making empty posts on undead social media handles.
The footage from a 1962 CBC documentary on the Indian Residential Schools from the past serves as a stark reminder of how appearances can be kept for decades. It becomes darker when involving minority groups that the middle class can’t “adopt” as a news flag to not feel bad for previous sins. Julian Brave Noisecat’s natural reactions as the narrative unravels make ‘Sugarcane’ a more vital experience than it already is.

The acclaimed Emilie Kass’s cinematography composes another character. Its languid shots of nature and the Canadian vastness help further the narrative, and the sensorial and emotional experiences proposed by ‘Sugarcane.’ They also give a dimension to how lost the people in this documentary can feel when they are in their privacy, staring into nothingness and trying to deal with the worst days of their lives.
‘Sugarcane’ is an example of how diverse voices producing their art and products can benefit the landscape and make people care about the ordeal of others.

The cop drama series ‘Three Pines’ (2022) brought to the mediatic attention the abuses happening in Canadian Indigenous Schools through fiction in a similar way that ‘Watchmen’ (2019) presented the mainstream public to the bombing of and the massacre of its Black denizens in 1920s Tulsa. However, ‘Sugarcane’ is not a work of fiction where good-looking samaritans will come to put an end to injustice, the documentary shows the lingering pain brought by decades of abuse and acts as not only a denouncement of how the Canadian state erodes Canadian society but also as a reminder of what lay ahead and how it can be normalized within a society and its values.

Rating: (5 / 5)

Also Read: Three Pines: The Unsung Detective Series Shedding Light on Indigenous Pain

The post Review: Sugarcane – A Sobering Look at Canada’s Hidden Past appeared first on Big Picture Film Club.

Three Pines by Amazon Prime Video is headed by renowned veteran British actor Alfred Molina (Spider-Man: No Way Home) who plays Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, a character hailing from detective novels authored by Louise Penny. Gamache is a member of the Sûreté du Québec and investigates homicides in the countryside village of Three Pines, located in Quebec Canada. There are four murders divided into 8 episodes, still, the parallel investigation of a missing Indigenous young woman drives the whole series.

Gamache leads the team composed of detectives Isabelle Lacoste (Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers), Jean-Guy Beauvoir (Rossif Sutherland) and Agent Yvette Nichol (Sarah Booth), the latter is very competent as the comic relief. The main cast is rounded by the villagers: cultural curator Bea Mayer (Tantoo Cardinal), writer Ruth Zardo (Clare Coulter), painter Clara Morrow (Anna Tierney) and choir singer Crie (Roberta Battaglia).

The series is more focused on solving crimes through the intelligence and detective skills of the team than applying gratuitous violence, still, it is gripping on how it deals with trauma and the mental health of the characters, in particular Indigenous peoples’ pain.

It not only touches on the issue of missing Indigenous women but the drama of the secluded Canadian Indian Residential Schools for Indigenous children that would take them away from their communities and force European values, as also physical and psychological punishment on them.

HBO’s ‘Watchmen’ (2019) and ‘Lovecraft Country’ (2020) employed works of fiction to highlight the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre and the carnage that destroyed those Black lives. Three Pines in a similar way brings to the audiences the real horror that are the ‘Canadian Indian Residential Schools.’

A government-funded structure that owns the abhorrent estimation of having between 3,200 to 6,00 students dead on its premises while having forced more than 150,000 First Nations, Métis and Inuit children in its program between the 1870s and 1997.

Only last year, Pope Francis acknowledged the role of the Catholic church in a system that promoted trauma, abuse and genocide while also having a policy of assimilation and enfranchisement that undermined the languages, cultures and philosophies of Indigenous folks. But Indigenous pain is not something relegated just to the past.

In the series the disappearance of Indigenous girl Blue Two-Rivers (Anna Lambe) shows how Canadian law enforcement can be neglectful and even abusive towards Indigenous lives and the backlash that leaves their families asunder, here played by Georgia Lightning, Crystle Lightning and Isabel Deroy-Olson. A pain that is also shared by Mayer as the talented veteran Tantoo Cardinal (‘Dance With Wolves’ (1990) and ‘Legends of the Fall’) expresses sorrow in her acting through anxious eyes alternating with a paused speech, one of the best interpreters of a well-rounded ensemble.

Another positive aspect of the show is having an Indigenous detective solving the case as happens with Lacoste, which justifies how painful for Tailfeathers the axing of the show was as pointed out on her Instagram, because it is not only a shot for an Indigenous woman to play the lead but also to tell nuanced Indigenous stories. The show also gained a lot by having among its directors, the Mohawk community member Tracey Deer who brings an authentical view to the forefront.

The series also deals with other dark subjects such as suicide, parental neglect, police corruption, addiction and so on, without trying to lecture. In the world of ‘Three Pines’ the psychological burdens can be as harmful as physical violence and even law enforcement agents like Gamache and Lacoste are susceptible to them. Three Pines doesn’t fall into the entrapment of forgetting the entertaining aspects to the series, however, it rightly focuses on the ordeals of those who are wronged be they Indigenous or non-Indigenous peoples. Aesthetically, Three Pines has strong cinematography, showing how ‘dark’ and dangerous days of snow can be and how a bucolic scenario can hide dangerous spots with lighting and camera angles. Although cancelled, Three Pines should be seen as an interesting series of detective procedurals that has a legacy of bringing to the spotlight the lives of those who not long ago were just there to be shot by cowboys; in Three Pines they are seen as complex and layered individuals just like any other character.

Also Read: City of God: 20 Years Later

The post Three Pines: The Unsung Detective Series Shedding Light on Indigenous Pain appeared first on Big Picture Film Club.