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GCC Film Series

Spring  2023 Event Details

The CHABSS Global Commitment Committee invites you to join us for a screening and panel discussion of "Land of Many Waters."

This event is FREE to attend.

FilmflyerAn ethno-geographic documentary film (90 minutes)

Join us

  • Tuesday, March 14th
  • 5:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.
  • Pizza and beverages provided
  • In-person event at USU Ballroom

Panelist

Dr. Daniel Cooper

Dr. Daniel Cooper is a geography and environmental studies lecturer in the Liberal Studies Department at CSUSM. He has a B.A from Hamilton College, an M.A. from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, and a Ph.D. from the School of Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford. He has worked as a consultant for the World Bank, United Nations, and International Labour Organization. His research is composed of two primary streams that often overlap and converge. The first branch is top-down, focused on global perspectives. The second thread is ethno-geographic, derived from participatory bottom-up approaches to document and analyze traditional knowledge among the Akawaio, Makushi, Arekuna, and Alleluia in the Guiana Highlands of South America. Additional interests include North American social movements, transfronterismo, and Indigenous communities such as the Coastal Miwok, Ohlone, Hupa, and Kumeyaay, focusing specifically on colonial and missionary histories, resistance, syncretism, rewilding, and revitalization. Ultimately, he aims to inform the field of historical ecological landscape with integral spiritual, psychological, and geographical perspectives. 

Film Resources

More information about the film can be seen on the film page linked above. 

World Premiere and Discussion with the Director: Daniel Cooper 

This is a story of Alleluia, a religion and highland revitalization movement that creatively synthesizes Indigenous and Christian ideologies. Most of the footage was recorded and translated during ethno-geographic doctoral fieldwork (2011-2013) in the landscape surrounding Mount Roraima that transcends Guyana, Brazil, and Venezuela. The audience gains a holistic understanding of this Amazonian landscape by taking a shamanic journey that follows various individuals and their struggles to maintain health and balance between and within powerful traditions and currents of change. Supplemental material is courtesy of Luke Notary (score), Winfield Coleman (map), Google Maps, Ibex Earth, the Pitt Rivers Museum, and Audrey Butt Colson who conducted her doctoral fieldwork in this landscape in 1951-1952. Ultimately, the film gives voice to the land and its diverse constituents that face threats of erosion and erasure. This voice is heard most clearly through the song, dance, and revitalization rituals of Alleluia. 

Sizzle Reel: Land of Many Waters 

For information about our previous films, please visit the Film Archive.