Alan Ereira
| Alan Ereira | |
|---|---|
Alan Ereira
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| Born | London |
| Nationality | British |
| Occupation | Film director, film producer, author, historian |
| Years active | 1965–present |
| Organization | Sunstone Films |
| Notable work | The Nine Lives of John Ogilby (Duckworths 2016), Armada, The Heart of the World: Elder Brother's Warning, Crusades, Terry Jones' Medieval Lives, Kings and Queens of England Terry Jones' Barbarians, Aluna |
Alan Ereira is an award-winning British author, historian and documentary filmmaker. He is a Professor of Practice at the University of Wales, Trinity St. David.
Educated at Kilburn Grammar School, Ereira subsequently worked at the BBC on television and radio since 1965 contributing documentaries to the Timewatch strand amongst others
He has been awarded the Japan Prize for his 1978 documentary on the Battle of the Somme, and the Royal Television Society Best Documentary Series award for his 1988 documentary on the Armada.
Ereira directed a documentary called The Heart of the World: Elder Brother's Warning (1990) for the British Broadcasting Corporation. In this film he documented his unique visits to the Kogi people of Colombia, an indigenous ('Indian') ethnic group which survived attempts by the Spanish conquerors to destroy them by retreating high up into the mountainous area of the Sierra Nevada, where they now live. These meetings were only allowed by the Kogi Mamos who normally restrict any direct interaction with the modern world. In Ereira's case, the Mamos made an exception as they saw him as the filmmaker they wanted to convey their message to the world.
Ereira regards the Kogi as unique amongst indigenous peoples in the Americas in that they have managed to retain their traditional culture almost entirely intact. Since the 1980s, the Kogi have warned, on the basis of their observation of ecological changes in the Sierra Nevada, that the world is facing an ecological catastrophe. They asked Ereira to make his films about them to warn the rest of the world (and particularly the West) that it needs to radically change its way of living, and its exploitative attitude to the natural world, if it is to avert this catastrophe. Ereira later wrote about the filming of the documentary in his book The Heart of the World (1990). This book has been republished and retitled as The Elder Brothers (1992) and The Elder Brothers' Warning (2009).
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