Antonio Bolívar, who played the role of the shaman Karamakat in the 2015 Oscar-nominated Colombian film Embrace of the Serpent / El abrazo de la serpiente directed by Ciro Guerra, died last night at the age 75 of coronavirus, several media outlets have reported in Colombia.
Bolívar, who was one of the last survivors of the Ocaina people, had been hospitalized for three days in the city of Leticia where he resided, in southern Colombia, next to the Amazon River and bordering Brazil and Peru.
He had some previous experiences in filmmaking, but he didn’t want to talk about them because he felt that they disrespected his culture. Besides playing one of the leading roles in Embrace of the Serpent, which became the first Colombian film to earn an Oscar nomination, Bolívar also served as interpreter for the Tikuna, Cubeo, Huitoto languages and even English, as he became the teacher of the international actors. He represented the best of the Amazonian people, willing to trust the foreigners, to transmit their knowledge and thankful to be treated respectfully.
Named one of the best Latin American films of the decade in Cinema Tropical’s poll, in Guerra’s third feature Embrace of the Serpent, the ravages of colonialism cast a dark shadow over the South American landscape. The film centers on Karamakate, an Amazonian shaman and the last survivor of his people, and the two scientists who, over the course of 40 years, build a friendship with him.
At once blistering and poetic and shot in stunning black-and-white, the film was inspired by the real-life journals of two explorers who traveled through the Colombian Amazon during the last century in search of the sacred and difficult-to-find psychedelic Yakruna plant.
In addition to acting in the film, Bolívar also helped rewrite the script and translated it into several languages. In an interview, Bolívar said that the most important aspect of the film to him was “that shows the Amazon, the lungs of the world, the greater purifying filter and the most valuable of indigenous culture. That is its greatest achievement.”
Bolívar also participated in the 2019 Neflix series Frontera verde (Green Frontier) in the role of Wilson Nai. The series is a Colombian crime thriller that follows the story of a young Bogotá-based detective who is drawn into the jungle to investigate four femicides, and he come across a mysterious indigenous tribe with an extraordinary secret that they will go to great lengths to protect."
