March 2009
 Anthropologist Lucas Bessire has conducted research with Ayoreo communities in Paraguay, focusing on the Totobiegosode clan’s villages of Arocojnadi and Chaidi, and he recently spent time in Bolivia with the Ayoreo in both the village of Zapoco and urban settlements in Santa Cruz. His documentary From Honey to Ashes was an official selection of the 2006 Bilan du Film Ethnographique, Musee de L’Homme in Paris. His first film Asking Ayahai: An Ayoreo Story has been screened widely in international film festivals, including Etnia Film Festival in Turku, Finland; International Ethnographic Film Festival in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; and the Ethnographic Film Festival in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Bessire has written extensively about the Ayoreo and about indigenous representation in film and media. He holds a B.A. from the University of Kansas; he has an M.A. and the Certificate in Culture and Media from New York University and is a doctoral candidate in anthropology there. He was recently awarded the Dean’s Dissertation Award from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at New York University and a second dissertation fellowship from the Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. The book he is producing from his research is entitled Becoming the Ayoreo: Two-Way Radio, Power and Emergent Indigenous Identities in the Gran Chaco, Bolivia and Paraguay. When not traveling to do research, Bessire resides in Manhattan.
"An elder once told me that he liked video because it could contain so many stories. Like him, I'm excited by the potential that film and video have to communicate and provoke the richness and complexity of the humanity that links us all, despite many efforts to convince us otherwise. In the case of the Ayoreo nation that I have been working alongside in various capacities since 2001, video work, as both a product and process, provides another way to share stories, teachings and relationships that are often under-valued, misunderstood or silenced. Sharing part of my life with them has been a blessing and a transformative experience, and I only hope that our work is useful to them now and in the future."
Screened by NMAI
Image credit:
Lucas Bessire - courtesy of the filmmaker
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