Creativity and Perseverance in a Precarious Context Filmmaking in Ayacucho between Artistic Vision and Lived Reality

In the early 1990s, a group of self-taught filmmakers from Ayacucho deployed video cameras to narrate their personal and collective experiences. With dramatic storylines and a typically antirealist aesthetic, these films have built up loyal audiences that celebrate the rise of their “own” cinema. By tracking the production processes of the film La maldición del Inca [The Curse of the Inca] (unreleased) by Martín Ccorahua and Lucho Berrocal, this chapter looks behind the scenes of Ayacuchean cinema in-the-making, assessing the power dynamics of cultural politics, the possibilities and the limitations in articulating an artistic vision. In doing so, it offers a contextualized understanding of filmmaking as a contemporary artistic practice in Andean Peru, and of the desire to re-imagine Ayacuchean identity through fictional storytelling.