WHY THIS FILM?

This film project in the Amazonia heralds a new stage in my work as a film-maker. Above all, it’s a challenge to make a film on a human and ecological topic, that can touch a wide audience as much in Switzerland as in Europe. It’s also an opportunity for me to quit the investigatory type documentary and to make a film which focuses on men and women, empathising with the characters.

Why this story about the Wayana people? Because I discovered the Wayana indians through a book called «Parana, the Indian of Amazonia». I learnt to read with this book at the age of six. So, therefore, firstly it’s a story from childhood.

When ethnologists told me that the Wayana Indians were threatened with extinction, I wondered: «what happened to the small Parana»? I decided to go to Guyana in 2005 to search for Parana. To meet him and his children, Aïma, Akama and Etumé, this was a moving moment in my life. For four years, I came every summer to live amongst them and prepare this film project.

I was shocked when I discovered this region and the damage caused by the placer minig (gold-washing). I felt powerless and I had the feeling that I was part of a collapsing world. The reality behind the destruction of the primary rainforest is unacceptable and the pollution of the rivers foresees the worst. After the disaster of Minamata in Japan and the poisoning of whole villages with mercury, we said never again.

Today in the south of Guyana, it is occuring again! Due to the fact that there is no
«clean gold» and we can attest loud and clear that the gold-bearing industries are amongst the most polluting in the world.

If we accept this scandal and let this ecological disaster continue, we become accomplices.
For me, there’s something about urgency to this film: it’s urgent to tell and show, it’s urgent to launch a debate because if nothing is rapidly done, the story of «Dirty Paradise» will be the chronicle of the announced death of the last Wayana in the French Amazonia.

Daniel Schweizer