A bold new film chron­i­cles life 5,000 metres above sea level

Nes­tled in the vast tun­dra of the Peru­vian Alps, at over 5,000 metres above sea lev­el, is the world’s high­est per­ma­nent set­tle­ment, La Rin­cona­da. Clos­er to the heav­ens it might be, but it resem­bles a cob­ble-stoned floor – a clus­ter of slate-grey build­ings cam­ou­flaged against unfor­giv­ing, frosty sur­round­ings. The 50,000 peo­ple who call it home do so because of its prox­im­i­ty to a local gold mine and their hard­scrab­ble lives are the focus of Salomé Lamas’ bold new doc­u­men­tary Eldo­ra­do XXI, which screens at London’s Tate Mod­ern on 11 January.

Lamas is her­self an excit­ing prospect. Still in her twen­ties and a PhD can­di­date at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Coim­bra, she already lays claim to an impres­sive fil­mog­ra­phy – a heady blend of audio­vi­su­al per­for­mance, mul­ti-chan­nel instal­la­tion, short films and, more recent­ly, two fea­tures. She oper­ates at the inter­sec­tion of var­i­ous modal­i­ties, adapt­ing form to suit func­tion and craft­ing ethno­graph­ic jour­neys that often teeter on the bound­ary between fic­tion and doc­u­men­tary. In her first fea­ture, No Man’s Land, her voice-over nar­ra­tion explic­it­ly express­es her desire to engage with the per­son­al per­spec­tive of her sub­ject, a retired mer­ce­nary recount­ing his bloody exploits: ​“I’m inter­est­ed in his truth.”

What is most arrest­ing in No Man’s Land, and height­ened fur­ther in her more accom­plished sec­ond fea­ture, is Lamas’ unflinch­ing empa­thy in the face of stark bru­tal­i­ty. No Man’s Land is a chron­i­cle of state-sanc­tioned vio­lence and Eldo­ra­do XXI of hard­ship and exploita­tion, but both are also deeply felt med­i­ta­tions on the human con­di­tion. Even when they’ve wit­nessed a lack of it on screen, when the dark­er recess­es of our nature are exca­vat­ed in front of their eyes, audi­ences are remind­ed of their com­pas­sion by Lamas’ for­mal inge­nu­ity and metic­u­lous con­struc­tion. Eldo­ra­do XXI’s first half is made up of what is per­haps the filmmaker’s bravest gam­ble yet, a sin­gle unbro­ken shot in near­ly pitch-black light that lasts for almost an hour.

A sequence of sta­t­ic, snowy land­scapes pro­vide the slight­est con­text before atten­tion turns to a rocky incline that appears to be either an unlit moun­tain­side or more like­ly the shaft lead­ing down into a mine. The cam­era watch­es on, unblink­ing for 55 min­utes as the work­ers trudge back and forth along this per­ilous path, their head­lamps light­ing the scene. Some crit­ics have decried the dura­tion of the shot for sup­pos­ed­ly pan­der­ing to a fes­ti­val cir­cuit that unre­served­ly ele­vates slow cin­e­ma, but in fact the monot­o­ny serves a far more impor­tant purpose.

As Luis Arman­do Arteaga’s lens lingers, the sound­track cycles through a panoply of aur­al accom­pa­ni­ments which in turn seem to morph the images. Begin­ning with a woman’s account of her fam­i­ly relo­cat­ing to La Rin­cona­da in search of sal­va­tion (“Rin­cona­da is for the peo­ple who have tried every­thing, no?”) the stream of work­ers ini­tial­ly seem to embody the fatigue of sus­tained effort to stay afloat. How­ev­er, as the audio con­tin­ues through cheesy radio jin­gles, unset­tling news reports, and har­row­ing accounts of betray­al and mur­der, the chain of head torch­es begins to have a trans­for­ma­tive effect.

When a news­read­er dis­cuss­es the over­whelm­ing build-up of refuse in the town, what at first looked like pale rocks below sud­den­ly take the shape of a moun­tain of garbage. When the shock­ing terms of the work­ers’ con­tracts is revealed – work­ing 30 days for free before being allowed to keep as much ore as you can car­ry on the 31^st day, irre­spec­tive of yield – the peo­ple strug­gling with enor­mous sacks on their backs become all the more trag­ic. When a women recounts instances of peo­ple falling – or being pushed – to their deaths, the wind­ing path seem all the more pre­car­i­ous. Sto­ries about mur­der and even human sac­ri­fice in offer­ing to the mine empha­sise the black­ness of the pit, like some omi­nous cir­cle of hell.

And then, after an hour, the film cuts to com­par­a­tive­ly shin­ing day­light. The cam­era patient­ly observes as wives of work­ers endure the bit­ter chill on a hill­side to search for unnamed min­er­als, or chew the cud – and the cocoa – in a small work­house while work­ers and hus­bands stum­ble drunk from the local pub to a broth­el. In an upbeat civic cel­e­bra­tion that clos­es the film, a song plays as peo­ple smile and sway: ​‘In a glass of beer I will kill this sad­ness / Like you killed my poor heart.’ It’s a moment of pro­found dejec­tion and, some­how, hope and per­se­ver­ance. Lamas once again shows her adept­ness at min­ing empa­thy from the bleak­est of ore, and she does so with a brac­ing exper­i­men­tal edge.