FACE TO FACE
At home in the Amazon
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It took British wildlife filmmaker, Nick Gordon, 10 years to make his award winning: Jaguar: Eater of Souls about the Matis Indians. He tells TISHANI DOSHI, how the Brazilian rainforest changed him.
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THE Matis Indians who live in Brazilian Amazonia have a remarkable saying: "God is great, but the forest is greater". For the Matis, who were first "contacted" in the 1980s, the entire world beyond their boundaries; the unknown, the cosmos, all of it, is imagined in context of the Brazilian rainforest. So, when Nick Gordon, British wildlife filmmaker, showed them pictures of his brick house in Scotland, their curiosity was not so much about the magic of an image on paper, it was about which kind of tree the brick came from.
Nick took 10 years to film his award winning, "Jaguar: Eater of Souls", helped by one translator, two assistants, and a tribe of 110 Matis. In all those years he encountered only seven individual jaguars; lived in a cabin where the nearest village was five days away by river; periodically yearned for his bathroom, pizzas, and family (not in that specific order); and survived multiple spells of malaria, cerebral malaria, hepatitis, dengue fever, and an assortment of fungus, maggot, and insect invasions to his skin.
By any account, the Amazon is a spectacularly mind-distorting place. It covers 2.25 million square miles, crosses the political borders of eight countries, is home to the world's largest river and half the world's tropical evergreen forests and terrestrial species. For Nick too, this is home.
Within weeks of being back in London, he physically feels his feet itching to get back to the forest. "I can't describe the sensation of going up the river, transferring to the small canoe, knowing it's the last six hours of paddling before getting up to the cabin... and then within 15 minutes of the camp, the monkeys would hear (he had a lot of orphaned monkeys he'd raised), and they'd come screaming down and pee all over you. It was a great feeling."
"Did you say pee?" I ask
"Yes," he laughs, "Sort of a welcome back thing."
* * *
Nick's first professional call to nature came in the form of an early morning phone conversation while he was fixing the kitchen sink. He'd been doing camera work for the BBC for eight years (an opportunity born out of some amateur filming at a disabled horse-riding event) and the odd underwater film, but no serious wildlife. After a botched interview, where he blundered his way through an explanation of crossing the line (a basic rule of filmmaking — the imaginary axis running through the middle of the scene which the camera should not cross), the last thing he expected was a job offer. When the man on the other end asked if he'd be interested in filming the underwater mating of the Chinese alligator, he thought one of his mates was having him on, so he hurled a few expletives at him and hung up. A month later, after the contract had arrived in the mail, he was on his way to China.
It would be in the upper Rio Branco, in Northern Brazil, though, where Nick, hiding in a pit filming giant expansa terrapins, would see his first jaguar in the wild.
It was a defining moment in his life. He knew then, that he was going to pursue the Holy Grail of wildlife filmmaking — capturing the elusive jaguar on film. He didn't imagine it would take quite so long, and that he would have to suffer such bodily harm in order to complete it; but for a man who's eaten giant tarantulas, marvels at the regurgitations of vampire bats, and has had an anaconda bump against his legs, there wasn't an overwhelming amount of fear involved.
The experience, unsurprisingly, greatly reduced his patience with people. He does spend a lot of time talking to children at schools and events because he believes that educating the youth is the only way to make real changes in attitudes toward the environment. Adults are already too conditioned.
Did the forest change him in any way spiritually?
"I'm not a tree-hugger. I'm not like that at all. What it has done is make me realise just how insignificant we all are. And that we're creating such terrible problems for ourselves by doing what we're doing to the environment and the natural world."
Humans, according to Nick, are the biggest threat to the rainforest. Like most places around the world, deforestation, loss of animal habitat and threat to the tribal people, are the big issues in the Amazon. He witnessed one of the worst affected areas in Brazil, the Mahogany belt, flying above in an aeroplane, where the effects of deforestation over the years were clearly visible. Nick is vehement when it comes to outsiders coming in with their arrogance and patronising ways, interfering with the lives of indigenous people.
"They don't need to be handed translated versions of the bible, or chainsaws and shotguns as big as themselves. They don't need to be shot on sight by loggers and they don't need to be exposed by outside diseases to which they have no immunity." In the 1980s, almost half the Matis population was wiped out by influenza.
The Matis played a crucial part in Nick's film, which is why he found it a natural evolution to weave their story into the narrative. This is because they worship and revere the jaguar as the Amazon's ultimate predator. The Matis believe that the jaguar eats the souls of their dead and carries their bodies to the next world. They mimic its solitariness in hunt, its stealth, and its accuracy in attacking prey. They make body markings and piercings to physically emulate the jaguar, but most importantly, the Matis know where the jaguars live.
For all his experiences, Nick Gordon is a quiet, contained man; not the prototype of a wildlife filmmaker expected by today's television viewers. He does have a sardonic streak of humour, which erupts ever so quietly in sporadic bursts. For instance, on commenting on the other people who came out there: "Most of them couldn't hack it — the humidity, the fear of isolation, the creatures (this he says with special glee), particularly the insects. At night, most of them couldn't sleep. They were just exhausted day after day, because of the noises at night, the frogs and crickets screaming as if they're being murdered, the biting flies... . Absolutely magical."
Needless to say, he's not going to be one of those men who takes up golf, retires on his farm and subjects his grandchildren to watching his videos. "I think I'll do this till I drop," he says. "Health, of course, is a big issue. But I'd like to live out the rest of my days there. That is, if there's any of it left."
For information about Nick Gordon films and books, visit www.nickgordon.com
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