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As part of my research, I am co-director of the documentary “An Uncomfortable Peace,” in collaboration with Oscar Osorio, Luis Gallego, Ricardo Venegas, and Carlos Álvarez. Set in Briceño, the rural village I have been researching since 2018, the film follows two families’ as they forge new futures in the context of a broader territorial transformation based on a landmark peace agreement and the building of Colombia’s largest hydroelectric dam. Fabio and Angelica use anti-dam activism and agroecological practices to resist the onslaught of war and corporate agriculture, while Suso, Eugenia and their children face a choice between fighting to stay in a countryside without a future and seeking a better education for their children in a city where they have no roots. The same struggle and two different realities, all in the name of love. “An Uncomfortable Peace,” currently in post-production, has been featured in El Espectador, Colombia’s most important daily newspaper.

Ethnographic Research through Participatory Filmmaking

A central challenge of ethnographic fieldwork is finding an excuse for sustained “deep hanging out” that allows a privileged look inside a particular social world. I have found that participatory documentary filmmaking is an excellent way to build relationships, get invited to a variety of spaces, and disseminate findings to a broader audience. Participatory means that the documentary is developed through ongoing dialogue between filmmakers and protagonists to establish the central themes, who and what we film, and how we eventually tell the story. This process is incredibly generative of research insights—for example, participants’ insistence on documenting their struggles to build and improve their road helped me understand the centrality of roads to both community life and efforts to replace coca economies. But in practical terms, it also generates buy-in to research by involving participants in a collaborative and exciting project. While the ethnographer as participant-observer may struggle to justify their presence, the ethnographer as documentary collaborator is welcomed to events, introduced to other key figures, and invited into their participants’ homes.

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We have finished filming and are currently in post-production. For press, please contact me.