La tentation de Potosi / Credit : Philippe Crnogorac, Zorba Productions
Yesterday I went to the premiere of “La tentation de Potosi” (The temptation of Potosi, only in one cinema in Paris for the moment). Interesting idea from the French documentary maker Philippe Crnogorac who had already made a film about Bolivia ten years ago. He heard about popular stories where Bolivian miners pact with the devil to get rich. Especially one called Manuel Morales, who disappeared after breaking the pact. He got 20,000 dollars from the devil and had to die one year later. But he left before and nobody knew what he became.
Philippe Crnogorac decided to search for him. And he brings us on his path, living with the miners, asking for him in the bars and brothels of the city. The quest is nothing easy. The beliefs are strongly established, everybody has heard about devil stories but people do not like to talk about special cases. Many questions, few answers. It does not matter a lot. The documentary is more a question about beliefs and a travel into Potosi’s everyday life (and I guess a personal quest, a very important dimension from my point of view). There the miners keep working in very poor conditions. Every month, some of them die. Silver reserves are officially exhausted but the miners still have hopes to find new wealth. And the mountains contain other metals. One of the strongest moment of the movie is the descent into the mine.
Whether one believes in devil stories or not, we can easily imagine it is a fertile ground for them. And the documentary perfectly reflects the mystical environment. “El Tio” (“the uncle”, the name for the devil) can appear in everybody. Or is it just a disturbing effect of altitude ?
La tentation de Potosi, by Philippe Crnogorac and Pascale Absi
With: Angel Arismendi, Bernard Blancan, Epifania De Arismendi…
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