28min | HD | original Spanish/Quechua version | with Italian, German or English subtitles available
Synopsis
Guañape Sur. A barren rock island off the coast of Peru. No soil, no water. Nothing is growing here.
Around its shores a restricted area has been established. The island serves hundreds of thousands
of sea birds as a breeding ground.
One of its peculiarities is that for a period of ten years only two men may live on it, in the eleventh
year though, hundreds of men simultaneously pounce on its slopes in order to recover the bird's
bequests: dried excrement, an acrid mixture of nitrogen and phosphor compounds, potassium ox-
ide and quicklime, which blunts one's sense of smell.
It can be used as a fertilizer or for producing dynamite. Its name is one of the few words the world
borrowed from the language of the Incas: guano. A war has been fought over guano. And even dur-
ing peacetime, harvesting it from the sharp rock is a brutal fght. Everything on the island is done by
hand.
IDFA Students competition 2010
Plus Cameraimage 2010
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