JULIANA PALLARES

About Me

THE MAKING OF THE BEYOND LAGARTOCOCHA VIDEO
My name is Juliana Pallares, and I was born in Ecuador, in the middle of the Andes, in the beautiful city of Quito on April 5th of 2000. I have always been a different kid, I remember my grandfather would always tell me not to wear shoes because he said I had to make my feet strong enough so I can walk anywhere because I would never know where life is going to take me.

I was raised in the jungle by the Secoya people because when I was little we used to go there very often. My father is a biologist and he lived in the Ecuadorian amazon for about three years. He has a unique relationship with this community, he made it possible in 1999 for the Secoya tribes of Ecuador and Peru to reunite after 60 years of forced separation following the 1941 war between the two countries. He also worked to get the Peruvian government to legally recognize a Secoya territory of over 500,000 acres and he was the pioneer of the environmental litigation by indigenous peoples and farmers against Texaco, now Chevron. My father, Manuel Pallares is well known and respected by the Secoya people. Since I was a child I would always go to the jungle with him, my mother and my two siblings. The first time I went to the jungle I was two years old. Traveling to the jungle has always been a challenge, I can barely remember the first time I went but I remember we had to travel for 13 hours in canoe, then camp on a sand island in the middle of the Aguarico River and wake up the next morning before the sun came out to get into 6 more hours in canoe. Since that first time I fell in love with the jungle, I fell in love with the breeze you feel in the canoe, with the sounds frogs make at night, and with the lovely people who share this culture. 

I was also raised in the coast by the afro-ecuadorian people. My family owns a hotel in Esmeraldas, a city located West from Quito, the capital city. Before I was born my parents lived in the coast with my older brother, who would spend most, if not all of his time with Paola, my sister. Paola was, at that time, the daughter of a lady that worked in our hotel. He’d spent most of his time with her, as if they were siblings. Later in life, my parents moved back to Quito, they adopted Paola, and then I was born. Growing up with Paola has defined my life. Even though we are not blood-related, we were raised as sisters, and I can say that she has been everything to  me, she has been my best friend, my advisor and my roommate. I believe that part of the reason that I am who I am is because of her. She has always brought so much spirit to our home. Her laughter and happiness shines in our family. Having her join our family gave me a unique opportunity, at a young age, to understand first-hand about other people with different socio economic and cultural backgrounds. Through Paola, I have been able to connect to her biological family. Even though we don’t live together, her biological brother and sister have always been present in my life, as family and as a window to a different way of life, that of an Afro-Ecuadorian fishermen family on the Ecuadorian coast.  

Wherever I go, whoever I meet, I never forget a detail of where I was born. I am more than proud to say that I’m Ecuadorian. I feel so lucky. Being able to expose myself to the most diversely and profoundly rich country in the world is a true privilege. Ecuador is a unique place in the planet, not only because you can travel from East to West in less than ten hours, and still be able to appreciate three marked environments– the Amazon rainforest, the Andean range, and the coast but also because the people here are so warm and will always make you feel home. In Ecuador, the people, landscapes and cultural expressions are so unique, and they never fail to impress me or anyone. Your immediate environment is one of the factors that shape you as an individual, and I am no exception.

ME AND FILM MAKING


Since I was a kid, I’d always borrow my dad’s camera because I loved taking pictures and making videos. My siblings were sick of me because wherever I went I’d always bring the video camera with me. It was like if I was doing a blog of my own life. When smartphones came out I’d download any application in my moms phone in which I could add any effects. Later in life, when I was in school I would always volunteer to edit and record group works that involve filming. I did a little commercial for a drink we made in chemistry class, a short trailer for a scary book we read in Spanish class, a short Coca cola vs Pepsi video for literary devices in English class and some other videos for a social studies and an economics and civics class. In 11th grade my friends and I started going on a lot of trips together and they’d alway bring their GoPros with them. After a while they asked me if I could make a short clip with background music with the videos we had recorded in our trip. I started doing really basic GoPro videos of every single trip me and my friends had and people started to tell me I was good at editing them; so I started using my skills in a more productive way. The second time I went to the jungle as Beyond Lagartococha I brought a camera my dad gave me, a Sony Alpha NEX-5N; which doesn’t have the quality a professional filming camera has but it is really easy to carry around and it was good enough for me. After this trip I posted short clips of the trip in social media, people started to comment and they started telling me I was really good at it, people also started asking me If I was going to study something related to film making and advertisement. This is when everything started to change. My whole life I was sure I wanted to be an architect just like my grandfather, I would follow his steps and I would re-build my family’s hotel to make him proud. At this point I was desperately looking for someone to make a short film or documentary for my Beyond Lagartococha project. The prices where too high but time was passing by and we needed that video so we could get more donations. This is when my mother suggested I made the video. I though her idea was crazy, whenever I edited my videos, my computer would crash because the videos where too heavy. I had so much stress on top of me because I knew I had to make the video somehow if we didn’t find anyone to do it for us. My dad saw me struggling and he proposed something to me. He said that he was willing to buy a computer that can handle all of my videos if I promised him I would dedicate all my free time to make videos for my project and for an NGO he runs. I didn’t know what to say. My whole life I was told I was good at something I didn’t even consider doing the rest of my life. I am really fast at editing videos and I enjoy it so much I can be in my computer cutting and adding clips all day. Thank’s to all the people who inspired me to keep doing what I liked I have decided that I no longer what to be an architect who re-builts other peoples dreams but I want to be a film maker who portraits its own dreams in a combination of music, images, sounds and transitions.