Sanja _uric_ic_ SDZ FDU English III

7/29/2019 Sanja _uric_ic_ SDZ FDU English III

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FAKULTET DRAMSKIH UMETNOSTIKatedra za snimanje i dizajn zvuka

Pisani seminarski rad, Predmet: Engleski jezik 2

ALUNA

Mentor:

Ljiljana Bogoeva Sedlar, prof.

Student:

Sanja Djurii, 4641

Beograd, januar 2013


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This semester we covered a lot of important topics. One of them was the

great film Aluna filmed by Alan Ereira, award-winning British author,historian and documentary filmmaker, in 2012. Actually the first movie with

this theme that aired on BBC was The Elder Brothers Warning1990. But

first, we have to find out what is Aluna all about.To be able to fully understand the concept of Aluna we have to learn more

about the civilization who believe in it. The Kogi are an amazing tribal

people who live in Columbia in South America high on the Sierra Nevada de

Santa Marta mountain. Whats s special about that place is the fact that their

sacred mountain home is like a whole microcosm, with all microclimates, sothat they have a really good sense for environment, and our duties to the

planet. They think themselves as Guardians of the planet and that where they

live on the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta is the Heart of the World. The

Kogi managed to keep their tradition despite the Spanish invasion of thecountry long time ago. The Kogi are descendants of the ancient Tairona

culture like the neighboring tribe the Arhuacos.

The Kogi first became famous when the movie From The Heart Of The

World: The Elder Brothers Warning was broadcast on BBC television in

1990. Due to the ever-growing pollution of the world Kogi got the feeling thatthey had to speak up, and educate the Western world about it. Astonished by

Western world blindness they call us The Younger Brothers. They agreed to

talk to Alan Ereira in order to reveal some of their beliefs and their ways of

living in order to end the Younger Brother selfishness.The Kogi think of the creator as a mother and believe that all is fashioned

from the creative spirit and mind. They call this inner mind Aluna. Their tribe

is run by shamanic leaders called Mamos or Mamas which means the sun,

enlightment. They are the ones that are chosen by an oracle to enlighten andteach their people. After commencing a training of nine years in which they

are kept in the dark in order to meditate they have to spend another nine years

in training in the

mens circle before

they are ready to be aMama. The Mamas

enter Aluna in their

meditations and

visualizations. They

strongly believe that

their meditations are

helping to hold the

world together.

The tribe believes

that the Younger


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Brother was sent across the sea with tools long time ago. Sadly, he came back

and destroyed their peaceful way of living. He brought the Catholic religion,guns, death and destruction. That is not the way we are supposed to live on

Earth. The Kogi have lived in harmony with nature without the destructive

use of technology. They are living in the way I personally think humans weresupposed to live: guarding delicate balance of our world, being farmers and

taking only as much as they really need. The Kogi are sure that we are the

ones to blame for catastrophic temperature changes, new diseases and

destroyed balance.

Because of the big popularity of the documentary The Elder Brothers

Warning the Kogi believed that we would change our ways. Sadly, we

seemed to be interested in their story in the same way we are interested in the

nature: seems honest and real, but this is just more fun. In the meantime our

world is suffering even more. Without anymore time the Kogi reached toAlan Ereira again, this time to unleash Aluna. Lets hope someone hears their

message.

Another tribe that tried to warn us about the dangers of the new world is

the Hopi. The Hopi live in North America and they have held to their ancient

wisdom and traditions like the

Kogi. They have prophecies that

they have seen being fulfilled in

the world events. In 1948 fourHopi elders were appointed as

messengers to explain their

prophecies and issue a warning to

the modern world. These beliefs

are commonly used to fuel

doomsday belief systems, but they

are not intended for this. They

should be warnings. There is what

is known as the Prophecy Rockwhich shows a choice of two

pathways that humans can take.

One path is the one that both

Kogi and Hopi decided to take: living in harmony with nature and this road

goes on and on but the other road depicted on Prophecy Rock ends in a zigzag

line that is thought to show our destruction: the pathway of technology and

materialism, the path the world has clearly been on.

American Indian poet John Trudell is known for his songs in which he

speaks about the balance of nature and the world and how its being destroyed


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by the crazy system that is in power. One of the most catching questions is

How do we sell our Mother? in his song Crazy Horse.

Marija Gimbutas (1921-1994), was a Lithuanian archeologist, knownfor her research into the Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures of Old Europe.That was the beginning of the matriarchal studies and the Goddess movement,

spiritual beliefs or practices that emerged from the second-wave feminism,

predominantly in Western Europe, North America, Australia and New

Zealand in the 1970s. She started talking about the cult of Goddesses rather

than the cult of Gods and that shocked the society. In 1989 documentary film

was made in Canada, Goddess Remembered by Donna Read. The maintheme of the documentary is the unexpected story of the matriarchal period

long before it was replaced by patriarchal official history. With thatreplacement all dreams of connection to Mother Earth vanished, our ideal

society was no longer the one that stands strong on overall care, respect and

love for each other, where equality and peace were ideas in minds of all. Our

role model became fierce dominant man. Conqueror has replaced the nurturer.

This may be the point in which we started behaving like a spoiled Younger

Brother and took the zigzag Hopi

line to destruction. Marija

Gimbutas research found that the

happiest cultures were the ones inwhich there was no dominance of

men or women, pure equality.

Nowadays, after feminists

movements, it seems that were

past the females neglect, but thedominance of the male is still

around us. As Marija herself said in

an interview:With weapons, with

hill forts, with war. That is a

civilization? Only then we call itcivilization when weapons wereused. But if there was a beautiful

art and another type of social

structure, then it was not a

civilization. It was pre-

civilization(Interview with Marija Gimbutas: The Language of theGoddess)


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It is not that hard to understand how can someone forget Aluna if

psychology is serving them new ideas that promote materialism and financialsuccess over love, care and spiritual success that makes our world better. I

was deeply disguised when I read the article How To Make A Money

Makerby psychologist Tim Kasser, Ph.D. It is literally an article on how tobreed a child that is financially aggressive and values monetary success. First

step is to make your self less warm, involved and democratic. Your lonely

child will start trying being successful, since children indentify with their

parents, hoping that you would love him. Tim Kasser writes: When mothers

are cold and controlling, their children focus on attaining security and a

sense of self-worth through external sources, such as financialsuccess. Of

course, the more people are materialistic, the less they value self-direction,

sociability, relationships with others, and by that also with Aluna. Materialism

is another catastrophe that is threatening to ruin our world.

Alice Walker (1944-) is an American author, poet and activist. Born

in a poor, black family she learned very early how to fight for education. Herparents gave up everything they had just so they could afford to send her to

school. She started writing and became famous for writing The Color

Purplein 1982, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize. This novel was later

made into a Steven Spielberg movie in 1985 starring Oprah Winfrey and

Whoopi Goldberg. The novel is about female black life in 1930s in thesouthern United States, racism and violence black women suffered. The main

character is Celia the poor, uneducated, fourteen-year-old black girl. She is


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being neglected, raped and beaten by her own father. The story follows many

women with different personalities in her environment.Another book Alice Walker published is In Search of Our Mothers

Gardens: Womanist Prose in 1983. Its a collection composed of thirty-six

separate pieces containing essays, articles, reviews, statements and speecheswritten between 1966 and 1982. Many of them are based on her

understanding of womanist theory. In the beginning of the book, Walker

describes womanist as A black feminist or feminist of color. From the

black folk expression of mother to female children and also a woman who

loves other women, sexually and/or nonsexually. Appreciates and prefers

womens culture. Committed to survival and wholeness of entire people, male

and female. Someone who is still in touch with Aluna. Someone who

understands that violence is not the best way to be remembered. In addition to

writing about womanhoodand creativity, Walker

addresses subjects such as

nuclear wars, anti-Semitism,

and the Civil Rights

Movement.One of her best works

is a poem called Democratic

Womanism. Walker read

this song 40 days before theelections in 2012. The poem

is beautiful and honest.Walker is criticizing the

system in which you can only

choose between two evils,

where it doesnt matter who is the president. She is talking about her ideal

system, Democratic Womanism or Democratic Social Womanism that wouldhonor the feminine. It is all about men and women being equal. She is against

the cruel manner in which our values of compassion and kindness have been

ridiculed and suppressed. Walker believes that we should examine the past

closely if we want to make progress. She is saying: I am thinking of

Democratic, and, perhaps Socialist, Womanism. For who else knows so

deeply how to share but Mothers and Grandmothers? Big sisters and Aunts?To love and adore both female and male? We should all learn how to share

and love from them.

Scott Nobles documentary film The Power Principle is about

realities of todays system. The theme is the foreign policy of the United

States. It demonstrates the importance of the political economy, the Mafia


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principle, propaganda, ideology, violence and force. It has three parts:

Empire, Propaganda and Apocalypse. The Power Priniciple is a history of theUnited States and the building of its empire.

Key to Scott Nobles hypothesis presented

in this movie is the relationship between theUS war industry, Wall Street, the US

military and the government in Washington.

The interlocking relationships between

corporations like Lockheed and presidential

appointees like Warren Christopher point to

the connections between war and Wall

Street in a very personal way. So do more

personal relationships such as the marriage

of Dwight Eisenhowers personal secretaryto an executive of the United Fruit

Company. Other graphic reminders of how

few families and corporations run the

United States are also discussed: Kermit

Roosevelts role in overthrowing thepopular Mohammed Mossadegh of Iran; the friendly relations between US

bankers like Prescott Bush and the German Nazi regime; the hiring of certain

Nazis after World War Two by the United States; the reinstallation of fascists

into government in Italy after the war to prevent the rise of the communists;and so on. All the things Alice Walker is fighting against.

I hope that one day we will be able to live purely as the Kogi, and learnhow to live without hurting the Mother Earth. Sadly, I think that that will be

able only when we decide to abandon monetary system. I believe that well

have enough food, water and energy for everyone when we learn how to share

like our mothers tried to teach us.

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Sanja _uric_ic_ SDZ FDU English III