Raymonde Carasco started making her films in Mexico with no institutional backing and just her own resources, moved by a passion for the “scripture of sight”: following in the steps of Voyage to the Land of the Tarahumara on which Artaud set out in 1936—and was to rewrite at the end of his life, in 1947, as a new theatre of cruelty and a new body—, filming the initiation of peyote rituals (Los pascoleros) and meeting the last shaman and the winter rituals, with Artaud’s “The Peyote Dance”, read by Jean Rouch, in Ciguri 98. In over 30 years of journeys, Carasco became friends with shamans and musicians of this people who survived the Spanish colonizers, capturing their animist energy and beauty before they disappeared. A marvellous artistic investigation into the mental activity involved in images, dream and visions, and “the positive powers of life”.
Los pascoleros – Tarahumaras 85, Raymonde Carasco, 1996, 27 min; Ciguri – Tarahumaras 98 – La danse du peyotl,R. Carasco, 1998, 42 min.16 mm screening. Copies from the collection of La Cinémathèque de Toulouse.
