Purchase: www.der.org/films/ausangate.html This film documents the lives of Quechua people who live around Ausangate, a sacred peak in southeastern Peru. It is based on anthropological research conducted over twenty years and reveals how the weavers make textiles encoded with symbolic images that reinforce ancestral beliefs during rituals and in everyday life. Four Quechua people's stories are told against a backdrop of high Andean lakes and mountains showing a harsh existence possible only through a strong symbiotic relationship to their alpacas and llamas. From these animals they gain food, pelts, dried dung for fuel, transport for goods, and yarn for clothing. They maintain a deep integrity through their interconnectedness with the natural forces and their ritual relationships to Ausangate, and they still organize their labor and social relationships through the Inca social practices of ayni and ayllu.

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