The Hummingbird and the Condor

The Hummingbird and the Condor
Wechua: Q'inti Kunturwan
Directed by	Illari Mamani
Written by	Illari Mamani
Based on	Wechua oral tradition
Produced by	Sumaq Rimachi
Starring	Nina Sallqa Tupaq Waman
Cinematography	Sayri Mayta
Edited by	Killa Ttito
Music by	Amaru Quispe
Animation by	Wayra Pictures
Production company	Wayra Pictures
Distributed by	Wayra Pictures
Release date	First week of Sylvaris (XII) 1759 AN
Running time	96 minutes
Country	Nouvelle Alexandrie
Language	Alexandrian Martino Wechua
Budget	c. NAX€40 million
Box office	NAX€214 million (domestic, first three weeks)

The Hummingbird and the Condor (Wechua: Q'inti Kunturwan) is a 1759 AN New Alexandrian animated feature produced by Wayra Pictures of Parap, Wechua Nation, and directed by Illari Mamani in her first feature. Drawn by hand and finished digitally, it tells a fable of two birds of Wechua belief, the hummingbird and the condor, crossing a drought-struck sky in search of the vanished rains. It was the first New Alexandrian feature released the same day in all three of the Federation's official languages, Alexandrian, Martino and Wechua, with the Wechua version outselling the others in half the country.

Released during the Recession of 1757, the film became the surprise commercial success of the year. Its distributor reported on 22.XII.1759 AN that it had led the domestic box office for three straight weeks, taken NAX€214 million at home against a production budget near NAX€40 million, and become the highest-grossing animated release in the Federation's history. Exhibitors credited the recession for turning families toward an affordable outing, and the film's prospects for a repeat became a matter of debate in the industry centered on Starlight City.

Plot

In a land struck by drought, the rains have failed because the upper world of the sky and the inner world beneath the earth, whose balance the Faith of Inti holds to be what brings the rain, have fallen out of true. Two birds set out to restore it: the condor kuntur of the upper world and the hummingbird q'inti of the inner world, each able to reach only half of what is needed. Badly matched and quarreling for much of the way, they journey to the sacred peak of Mount Lacara, where the three worlds meet, and learn to depend on one another. Their meeting at the summit, the union of opposites the faith holds to renew the world, brings the rains back to the land.

The drought has dried the world of living things, kay pacha: the terraces crack, the springs sink, and the herds grow thin on the high pasture. In the belief the film draws on, rain comes only when the upper world, hanan pacha, and the inner world, ukhu pacha, meet at the sacred convergence the faith calls tinkuy, and that meeting has failed, taking with it the rains of Illapa, the god of thunder and rain. The condor can climb to where the storms gather but finds nothing below to make them fall; the hummingbird knows where the last hidden spring lies but cannot lift its water to the clouds. Neither can act without the other, in keeping with the faith's rule of ayni, that what is taken must be repaid, and though the two belong to opposite worlds they are signs of one element, wayra, the wind, from which the studio takes its name.

The two make awkward companions on the road. The condor is as long as a doorway and crosses a valley in a single glide, while the hummingbird is the size of a thumb and wears itself out keeping pace, and at first each scorns the other, the condor treating the small bird as a pest and the hummingbird treating the great one as slow and remote. Much of the journey is their argument over whose world matters more, until the dying country beneath them turns it: passing over emptied villages and the bones of the herds, they stop disputing rank and begin to ask whether anything below will live to see the rain.

At Mount Lacara the way divides into two paths that neither can take alone. A crevice drops into the earth, too narrow for the condor's wings, while above it the thin cold air rises higher than any hummingbird has flown. The hummingbird goes down into the dark and brings up the last of the deep water, and the condor carries the small bird on its back far past its own ceiling, so that the two reach the summit together; the condor's climb reverses the city's founding story, in which the golden condor Qori Kuntur, envoy of Inti, once came down this mountain and founded Parap. At the top the answer proves to be their meeting itself, for in this faith two opposites brought together are what renew the world. The hummingbird lifts its drop of water to the condor's height, the condor bears it up to where the cold can take it, and through the two birds the upper and inner worlds touch again. Illapa's thunder answers, and the rain breaks at last, carried on the wind the birds share, falling between the great one and the small one onto the waiting land.

Voice cast

• Nina Sallqa as the hummingbird, q'inti
• Tupaq Waman as the condor, kuntur

Production

The Hummingbird and the Condor was made by Wayra Pictures, an independent studio founded in Parap in 1735 AN that had spent a quarter-century making hand-drawn features rooted in Wechua storytelling and finished with digital work. The picture was the first feature directed by Illari Mamani, a Parap animator, who said the studio had set out to make a film in Wechua first rather than one the rest of the country would tolerate. Wayra's head of production, Sumaq Rimachi, oversaw the work. The score was composed by Amaru Quispe.

The story takes its shape from two signs of the New Alexandrian Zodiac, the hummingbird q'inti and the condor kuntur, which the zodiac reckons signs of a single element, wayra, the wind, the word the studio had taken for its own name. Beneath the signs lies the theology of the Faith of Inti, which holds that existence is made of complementary opposites in balance, a pairing it calls yanantin, and their meeting a tinkuy, a convergence held to bring renewal; the hummingbird belongs to the inner world, ukhu pacha, and the condor to the upper world, hanan pacha. The setting draws on Parap's own identity as Kuntur Pacha, the Condor's Realm, the city that keeps the Inti Kuntur Wasi, the monument to the golden condor Qori Kuntur whose descent the Wechua hold to have founded it. The convergence the story turns on has a home in the faith's geography, the tinkuy of the two worlds that the Faith of Inti locates at Mount Lacara, the peak above Parap.

Release and box office

The film was marketed under the tagline "The smallest wings may carry the storm." It opened in the first week of Sylvaris (XII) 1759 AN and led the domestic box office for the three weeks that followed. On 22.XII.1759 AN its distributor said it had taken NAX€214 million at home and booked NAX€78 million in foreign pre-sales, led by Natopia and buyers across the Euran markets of the Raspur Pact, the widest foreign slate any New Alexandrian animated film had carried. It was the first New Alexandrian feature released simultaneously in Alexandrian, Martino and Wechua, and the Wechua version led sales in half the country.

Reception

Exhibitors read the film's reach against the Recession of 1757, then in its third year, which had thinned household budgets and driven cinemas to discount family seats. Camila Duarte, who runs cinemas across Punta Santiago and the Aldurian coast, said the picture was the one outing a family of four could still afford and that audiences were returning a second and third time. Not everyone in the industry saw the result the same way; an unnamed producer at a major Punta Santiago studio called it a phenomenon rather than a business model and questioned whether Parap could build a second such film before the recession ended.

The success extended a line of Wechua-language film that the trade had treated as prestige rather than commerce, from Wayra's own debut Legends of the Sky Serpent (1737 AN) to Elena Vásquez's Daughters of Inti (1741 AN), neither of which had led the box office outright. The first industry verdict on the film was expected early in 1760 AN, at the Starlight Awards given by the National Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences (NAMPAS).

See also

• Cinema of Nouvelle Alexandrie
• Wayra Pictures
• Faith of Inti
• New Alexandrian Zodiac