The Burden Carriers, 2007
dir. Pierre Barrera

For some reason this film was slated in the “Shorts from the Underground” section of ImagineNative. Albeit, this film can definitely be read as a short, realistically though it doesn’t fall within the classical narrative genre but exists somewhere in between narrative and experimental film, what I like to call experimental narrative. Shame on Maria for finding this tedious—just kidding—she has the right to feel this way as I can definitely see how she might, but I on the other hand felt the somewhat post-apocalyptic atmosphere, ala Terry Gilliam, and environmentally wasteful commentary on American consumer society refreshing in this tongue-in-cheek piece. After being introduced to Pierre by our mutual friend, Sterlin Harjo, I had the opportunity to sit down with Pierre and his wife prior to the screening. Both Pierre and his wife are extremely charming and warm people. I have never felt more relaxed in front of people after having only met them seconds before.

Our conversation moved to Pierre’s film, as I prodded to know more. Thus, Pierre informed me how he had an orchestra score the film in a very “experimental” style (see this is why we’d tend to categorize his film as experimental). The orchestra was given great liberty to experiment on the score as they watched the edited version over and over to provide the accompaniment for it. I had mentioned to Pierre it sounded as though it was a “foley orchestra”, which I was pleasantly surprised to hear him use this phrasing when discussing his film afterwards.

The Burden Carriers starts off with about five individuals carrying immense burdens of waste, if not possessions on their backs. They are somewhere in the desert, in this case high mountain desert, as Pierre filmed The Burden Carriers in Santa Fe. These five individuals roam the ostensible wasteland collecting post-consumer waste as they forge ahead adding it to their already cumbersome loads. One individual is stuck hauling a refrigerator on her back. Eventually they come to a highway and a pickup truck stops beside them as a man gets out and hands the lead carrier a steering wheel that he is getting rid of and the carrier affixes it to his burden. As the carriers continue their directionless march they move through the downtown center of Santa Fe (anyone who has visited Santa Fe will be able to identify this location with ease). Finally, the carriers come to rest within a suburban locale outside some poor, unexpecting family’s house. The burden carriers make themselves at home on the family’s front lawn and slowly, but literally, unload their burdens upon this family. Now and again, a carrier will go missing, which is eventually revealed as some unknown governmental force whisking these “burden carriers” off in a white van. It appears that since these original “burden carriers” no longer take part in our consumer culture, they are deemed no longer useful for our economy and wheeled off to some unknown wasteland of environmentally friendly, anti-consumer population away from the consumer-controlled populace. The poor unexpecting family has now become the next generation of burden carriers.

As I’ve recently, once again, begun to pare down my possessions (in an attempt to lessen my large carbon footprint), this was the way I read Pierre’s construction. He told me this was his first attempt at directing someone else’s screenplay, and I think he did a wonderful job commenting on our consumer culture with satire, wit and composition.