The Atlas Performing Arts Center in Washington is showing Altiplano, a lyrical film about our divided but inextricably linked world, directed by Peter Brosens and Jessica Woodward. The film tells the story of a Belgian cataract surgeon working at an eye clinic in the high Andes of Peru. Nearby, villagers succumb to illnesses caused by a mercury spill from a local mine. When a young man dies of mercury contamination the villagers turn their rage on the foreign doctors. Altiplano premiered in the competition of the 2009 Cannes Film Festival’s Critic’s week.

After 13 years of working on a range of projects in Mongolia, Peter Brosens travelled to the Andean highlands to direct Altiplano with Jessica Woodworth. He first visited Peru in 1984 where he did extensive fieldwork on the integration of invasion settlements in the city of Lima. From 1988 until 1990 he lived and worked in Guayaquil (Ecuador) studying migration from the Andes, and in 1992 he investigated epidemic forms of protest suicide in the central Ecuadorean highlands. His award-winning documentary El Camino del Tiempo is one of the results of this in-depth research.

General Admission $5.00