Film connects rarámuri runner to French poet
Summary and headline written by AI from the source article. How we work
Mexican filmmaker Federico Cecchetti’s film Jíkuri: Viaje al país de los tarahumaras depicts a connection between a Rarámuri runner and French poet Antonin Artaud.
The film explores Artaud’s 1936 journey to the Sierra Tarahumara in Mexico to learn about jíkuri, the sacred name for the peyote cactus, and his experience with a runner from the Rarámuri community. Cecchetti identified with Artaud’s search for the origins of art within indigenous cultures, drawing on his prior experience filming the Wixári people.
The Rarámuri people prefer to be called Rarámuri, but Cecchetti used the name “Tarahumaras” as it appeared in Artaud’s book Viaje al país de los tarahumaras. The film portrays how the Rarámuri now treat jíkuri as a deeply sacred ritual, almost to the point of considering it taboo, a contrast to its use among the Wixári.
During the ritual, dancers enter a trance through movement and song, rarely consuming the cactus itself, and sharing a small amount in a diluted drink at the ceremony’s end. The film features French actor François Negret as Artaud and Rarámuri runner José Cruz Apachoachi, along with community members from Chihuahua. Cecchetti described a dynamic between the actors mirroring Artaud’s original experience, with clashes that ultimately enriched the film.
Jíkuri is the second film in Cecchetti’s planned trilogy about Mexico’s indigenous cultures, following El sueño del Mara’akame from 2016.
