Waves of Change

A great photo of with the children of Estirón.

"Walking with my participants: the children of Estirón, in Peruvian . I’ve been working with children in this village since 2010. I look at how their , desires and play are driving the of Amazonia towards radically new directions.

If we want to understand the future (and work together to make it sustainable) we must listen to children’s ."

And if you’d like to read more about and social change in Amazonia, you can find Camilla's at the link in her bio - “Children of the Rainforest”, published by

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The Estirón team and their clay puppets.

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Sophie Makes Books
Funded by the The British Academy

Lets tell stories with our hands.

A shot from our animation workshops in Estirón

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An Amazonian says that a long time ago, a man and a woman went fishing on the river. They ventured too far, where they shouldn’t have gone, causing a huge inundation that submerged them and all other people.

Only two young men managed to escape the flood, and feeling lonely, they made pretend people out of . They went to sleep and were woken up by human voices: the mud-people had become alive, and joined the two young men to form a whole new .

Last month, we made an animation based on this myth with children in the village of Estirón, in Peruvian .

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Some more photos from our animations workshops in
We cant wait to show you what everyone has made!
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It’s been quite the challenge to design and run workshops in a hot and sweaty rainforest with no electricity, internet or phone signal.

We made animations with everything available to us: clay from the river, the chalkboard in the classroom, paper cut-outs, we even animated the children with pixilation.

We were inside the classroom and outside using the forest and clouds as our background.

It was chaotic and exciting with all the kids, young people and older peeps working together 🦜

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Animator

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"In these photos I am with Freddy and Percy, who grew up in the community of Estirón, in Peruvian Amazonia. In 2010, when I started doing research in their village, Freddy and Percy were little children.

They made a lot of that have been a key part of my fieldwork, and taught me a lot about their , their desires for the , and the meanings of Amazonian . I tell about the games they used to play in my book, “Children of the Rainforest”.

Now Freddy and Percy are young men, studying at the University in Iquitos and learning English.

The book we are holding was written by , another Matses young man who was a child when I started doing research with them and now is an graduate and a published .

I am super proud. ♥️🥰"
Camilla Morelli

Waves of Change funded by

🐍 Uampamësën Tsitiaid | The Boa That Split Us 🐍

Still from our first animation made in Estirón. This story tells of a time a long time ago before the Matses had boats. To cross the river they would throw smoked meat into the water and a giant boa would rise allowing them to cross.

Women on their period had to wait to cross last, but when a man crosses the boa who a woman (on her period) is in love with, she follows him leaving half the people including her husband behind.

As she crosses the boa sinks below the water and will not rise again splitting the people into two. The husband shouts to the man “stay with my wife”.

All paintings and art made by the amazing and animation by the young people of Estirón.


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Animation Process part 2! Once we had our two stories chosen and recorded, wonderful matses artist painted the scenes and characters ready for animation.

With two animations stations the young people animated the story by moving the little paper puppets one photo at a time.

Once all the scenes were animated we put them together with the voice over and had a screening with the entire community under the full moon 🌝 (it was pretty magical) 💫


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Animation Process part 1! The aim for our two weeks in Estirón was to animate traditional stories/histories/myths (depending on who is translating).

We started by meeting los sabios, the older generations of the community. Sitting in a circle each person told a story which we recorded and translated together. From these stories of snake glory holes, fertility rodents, cannibals and jaguar men we had to choose two to make (not easy)!

The stories were chosen for their length (some were 15mins plus and therefore impossible), the visuals and the level of complication.

We made an extremely rough storyboard which the sabios corrected “oh no you don’t see the Boa eating!” “No they don’t wear any clothes.” And we recorded the sound effects with them. “We’ll show you the tree and how to hit it”. “This is how you climb this type of tree…” etc

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Camilla Morelli Co-presented a paper at conference, in , with her friend and colleague Roldán Tumi Dësi on Saturday.

"Roldán is the first graduate in his Amazonian society (the Matses). He grew up in a rainforest village and later moved to , where he studied at the Universidad Nacional de la Amazonía Peruana.

We met in 2018, when he took part in a I was leading, and he made animated films with us as a workshop participant.

He is now working as a research associate in my project “Animating the Future”. He is leading the workshops himself, and teaching other young people how to make . He has also published a book and academic articles.

This is his first international and I’m beyond proud to be co-presenting a paper with him."
Camilla



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