Dec 21

Dec 21 So the forest might be preserved (Natay Etai Collet)

Natay Etai Collet promotes the irreplaceable beauty and magic of living forests.

Synopsis
In this Spanish-language podcast, Argentinian cinematographer and forest-activist, Natay Etai Collet, is interviewed by Rev. Neddy Astudillo for our collection, A Climate Transition Supported by Faith. Below we share Natay’s English-language bio, some favorite self-produced films, and more. Don’t miss out on viewing her exceptional cinematography (featured in the podcast and below).

Míralo en YouTube. O escuche aquí.

Natay Etai Collet was born in the city of Juan José Castelli, province of Chaco, Argentina. Since she was a child she always had a relationship with nature and farm animals that she had to take care of together with her friends who were also from different cultures. In her neighborhood there were and still are a large number of people who are descendants of Volga Germans, Peasant families and indigenous Qom families; including a Wichí man, who lives under a Quebracho Colorado (a type of tree).

When Natay was 9 years old she already had a film camera and was taking pictures of the environment where they lived. At the age of 10 she said to herself, "this is my thing!", when she saw in action a group of people from a TV program ("The adventure of man") who came to film the forest. For 14 years, and now as part of Tortugas Producciones, she has been making audiovisual recordings of the flora and fauna, landscapes and interviews with people who live in the Department of General Güemes and Brown, popularly known as "the impenetrable". These recordings are often done on her own or accompanied by people who know the area, neighbors and fellow park rangers, with the aim of leaving an image and sound banks of what the region is.

Natay has worked in more than 100 screenings in Qom, Wichi, Criollos communities and for her people. One of them was an Indigenous Film Festival promoted by the Department of Cinema of the Province and the CEFREC of Bolivia, where she helped with the production and support in workshops, community cinema — cinema where people tell what they want to tell, the camera as a communication tool of their own culture written by the people themselves.

When she was a child she already saw trucks passing by with gigantic trees. As she grew up, it now was trucks and bulldozers with chains. Natay has filmed clearings where once she filmed a forest, animals and plants, now gone.

And so, a mixture of experiences in provincial parks and natural areas, plus a very hard political and economic crisis, led her recently to set the old camera with its bank of images aside and study the career of Superior Technician in Park Ranger in San Pedro Misiones.

For the last year Natay has been a park ranger at the Loro Hablador Provincial Natural Park. She now lives in the forest and works to take care of it together with the people of the forest. Meanwhile, she continues making mobile cinema and filming. Above all, she tries to enjoy and collaborate to take care of this last remaining piece of forest, with the suffering of the people, the fauna, the flora, and the rivers that dry up. However, Natay continues filming, putting her body and hope on the frontlines, so the forest might be preserved.