—CAUSE
Open-pit minning—CLIENT
Self-managedCHALLENGE
Mega mining is an industry that extracts precious metals. Its methodology requires the use of toxic elements, such as cyanide. It demands large amounts of water and energy, and the damage that it causes to the environment is irreversible. However, due to the power of the mining lobby, information about this issue is usually biased or poorly disseminated. This results in a citizenry affected by serious socio-environmental and health issues, that has no resistance towards this due to an intentional lack of knowledge.
OUR TAKE
In spite of the fact that there are many documentaries and feature films that deal with mega mining, their lack of wide circulation in critically affected areas posed a challenge and opportunity for us. That is why in PAYADA (improvised folk song) we decided to create an emotional bond with the audience, showing a fictional story that could be anyone suffering from these issues affecting their daily lives. In addition, we chose to leave some things up in the air so that people could continue looking into the issues after engaging with our media.
THE RESULT
As this was a self-managed project, we had the chance to deeply explore both the technique and the aesthetic, placing them at the service of what we were interested in telling. We combined live action, scale models, stop motion animation and other techniques, achieving a truly impressionable end result.
For the narrative structure, we used the payada, as it is the homegrown musical genre in which the portrayed populations (gauchos from northern Argentina) narrate their tragedies. Released in 2014, it reached hundreds of thousands of views and had a major impact on the environmental and audiovisual world. It won over 40 awards and was recognized at various festivals.