ABSTRACT
One common sense of cinema is that of an extreme, hyperreal construction of reality. Field sites do not seem to escape this fate, and in due course become locations, and in turn locations become sites of fieldwork. The subject of this chapter is the production of an Argentine feature film, shot in part in a Mapuche reservation and a neighbouring town in Patagonia. Research was carried out in April 2000, accompanying the director, Javier Olivera, and the film-crew in Patagonia for ten days. Here, however, the main emphasis is on the actual process of fabrication of reality during the shooting process, ethnography off screen as it was observed first-hand. A different narrative of the film shoot was obtained from the villagers of Aluminé. Aluminé is a small town, aspiring to grow as a tourist centre in a remote part of Argentina, offering hiking and wild-water holidays.
