"A million invisible helping hands" Drawing by Jaya
From Bilal Qureshi's story on National Public Radio in the US, about Guerra and Gallego's film Birds of Passage: Amidst huge changes freighting a culture never previously colonized in Colombia, South America... "...it is the women ... who sense that something is wrong. The Wayúu are a matrilineal society, and in dream sequences and natural omens, only the women foretell the impending chaos.
"One of the key omens are the birds of the film's title, which often appear on screen, silently walking through a room or landing on a branch in hypnotic, unexplained moments.
"The Wayúu have a strong relationship with birds and what they symbolize," Gallego says. "When a certain bird appears, it's bringing news, certain omens. They're the messengers of what's to come...." "'When we started working on this world, we realized that the code of magical realism — and specifically of the world of One Hundred Years of Solitude — was written in the 'key' of Wayúu, because García Márquez was educated by Wayúu,' Gallego says."
" For Birds of Passage, Gallego says 30 percent of the crew came from the Wayúu community: "They were constantly correcting us on how we represented them appropriately," she says. It was always welcome, she says, because the collaboration as equal partners was key to avoiding the traditional colonial gaze of the outsider looking in."