Newen, a documentary by Myriam Angueira and her team, possesses a vital energy. The title, an ancient Mapuche word, is both intimate and epic, something whispered, an enigmatic conception of the universe from the end of the world (in both geographic and historical terms), a secret code of mists, landscapes and wise old women, people who merge together in a collage that slowly but surely combines the past, present and future.

Its make-up is like that of a solemn wanderer, its daimon is a foggy, rainy, celestial cantata, translating what we know as cinema into another, very Latin American form. It is a sister-project to poems such as Neruda’s Canto General (General Song), or Galeano’s Memoria del Fuego (Memory of Fire).

This exemplary work represents the culmination of many years’ careful sowing and cultivation. Within it, image and reality, passion and intelligence, the project and the future all combine. As Bola de Nieve sang ‘conscience and heart’ become one and throb with the memory of our America.

Fer
Rome, 5 September 2016.

On a journey through Patagonia I look for traces of the repressed identity of my Mapuche grandmother, meeting kimches (old wise women) who know how to pass ancestral knowledge on through the newen (living energy), transforming words into seeds for new generations. As I listen to them, I recover part of an identity that was also denied me. Fill wenu mapu trenko llawi: the universe flows in a circle.