QUETTA: Five more Levies personnel have been dismissed from service on charges of failing to perform their duties during a militant attack on a check post in Noshki district last week.
The attack was carried out by unidentified militants who used automatic weapons to seize control of the Kishingi check post. After taking over the post, they took away official weapons and equipment and set Levies vehicles on fire before escaping the area. “Levies personnel deployed at the check post failed to offer resistance during the militants’ attack,” officials said.
A girl views copies of hand-drawn posters of Chinese animated blockbuster “Ne Zha 2” at an exhibition held in Beijing, capital of China, April 19, 2025. (Xinhua/Li Xin)
After shattering virtually every box office record in Chinese film history, “Ne Zha 2” will conclude its theatrical run on the Chinese mainland by the end of Monday.
According to ticketing platform Maoyan, the animated phenomenon has grossed 15.44 billion yuan — or approximately 2.13 billion U.S. dollars — with 324 million admissions, making it the most-watched and highest-grossing film ever in China.
While the film’s domestic screenings draw to a close, its global rollout continues. Currently, its global box office sales total 15.91 billion yuan, or about 2.19 billion U.S. dollars, per Maoyan data.
The sequel to the 2019 hit “Ne Zha” has not only eclipsed its predecessor but also outperformed nearly every cinematic competitor — domestic or foreign — since its release on Jan. 29, during Chinese New Year.
“Ne Zha 2” now ranks among the five highest-grossing films of all time globally, along with “Avatar,” “Avengers: Endgame,” “Avatar: The Way of Water,” and “Titanic.” And it is the top-grossing animated feature in history, surpassing the likes of Pixar’s “Inside Out 2” and Disney’s 2019 remake of “The Lion King.”
Combining mythological storytelling with cutting-edge animation and emotional nuance, “Ne Zha 2” has become a cultural phenomenon in China and, increasingly, abroad. In a recent investor update, production company Enlight Media said a newly produced English-dubbed version is expected to arrive in North American theaters this summer, and the film has already been screened in over 30 countries and regions — primarily in its original Chinese audio with localized subtitles — including more than a dozen in Europe.
A man walks past a screen showing a poster of the Chinese animated film Ne Zha 2 before a preview screening at the BFI IMAX theater in London, Britain, on March 14, 2025. (Xinhua/Li Ying)
Yin Hong, vice chairman of the China Film Association, called the film “a milestone for Chinese animation,” saying that “it demonstrates the vitality of China’s creative industries, the enduring appeal of its cultural heritage, and the global potential of its storytelling.”
Indeed, what began as a retelling of a rebellious boy-god from Chinese mythology has blossomed into a contemporary saga that resonates across age groups and cultures. While rooted in ancient lore, the film explores modern themes such as destiny, social prejudice and identity, earning praise from both teenage fans seeking empowerment and older viewers drawn to its emotional catharsis.
“I believe that one day, new ideas, deeper meanings and new soul will emerge from the film, and the whole world will be able to appreciate it,” said director Yang Yu, also known as Jiaozi.
Technically, the film is a marvel, too. With nearly 2,000 special effects shots and the collaborative efforts of more than 130 animation studios, it draws a new high-water mark in Chinese animation.
At the 2025 Shanghai International Film Festival, Enlight Media chairman Wang Changtian estimated the film’s overseas box office would exceed 100 million U.S. dollars — a potential two-decade record for a Chinese film abroad.
Enlight Media has stated that merchandise related to “Ne Zha 2” now spans more than 30 categories and over 200 products, including blind boxes, plush toys, action figures, and more.
Girls take a selfie in front of a promotional display for the premiere of Chinese animated blockbuster “Ne Zha 2” in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on June 25, 2025. (Xinhua/Luo Chen)
The film’s success has been a boon for China’s theatrical sector. Largely driven by “Ne Zha 2,” box office takings in the world’s second-largest film market during the 2025 Spring Festival period surged to an all-time high.
A cinema in Wangjing in Beijing’s Chaoyang District credited “Ne Zha 2” with generating 40 percent of its revenue over the past five months. “Without it, we might still be struggling to find our footing,” the theater, which opened in mid-January, said in a WeChat post on Sunday.
“Ne Zha 2” may have concluded its domestic run, but its international trajectory is continuing. A second wave of overseas distribution for the film’s English-language version is planned for the months ahead, though a specific release date has yet to be announced.
Meanwhile, anticipation is building up for a third installment in the movie series. In response to investor inquiries earlier this month, Enlight Media stated that “Ne Zha 3” will be held to even higher standards. “We will take great care to meet audience expectations,” the company said.
As China redefines its cultural presence on the world stage, “Ne Zha 2” stands as both a commercial juggernaut and a symbol of creative ambition. “It’s a miracle and a peak in Chinese cinema,” said Chen Xuguang, director of the Institute of Film, Television, and Theatre at Peking University. “A record that may remain unbroken for a long time.”
Newswise — Animals, from worms and sponges to jellyfish and whales, contain anywhere from a few thousand to tens of trillions of nearly genetically identical cells. Depending on the organism, these cells arrange themselves into a variety of tissues and organs, such as muscles, sensory systems, or the gut. While not all animals have each of these tissues, they do all have one tissue, the germline, that produces sperm or eggs to propagate the species.
Scientists don’t completely understand how this kind of multicellularity evolved in animals. Cell-to-cell adhesion, or the ability for individual cells to stick to each other, certainly plays a role, but scientists already know that the proteins that serve these functions evolved in single-celled organisms, well before animal life emerged.
Now, research from the University of Chicago provides a new view into key innovations that allowed modern, multicellular animals to emerge. By analyzing the proteins predicted from the genomes of many animals (and close relatives to the animal kingdom), researchers found that animals evolved a more sophisticated mechanism for cell division that also contributes to developing multicellular tissues and the germline.
“This work strongly suggests that one of the early steps in the evolution of animals was the formation of the germline through the ability of cells to stay connected by incomplete cytokinesis,” said Michael Glotzer, PhD, Professor of Molecular Genetics and Cell Biology at UChicago and author of the new study. “The evolution of three proteins allowed both multicellularity and the ability to form a germline: two of the key features of animals.”
Positioning the division plane
Cell division, or cytokinesis, is the process by which a cell divides into two distinct daughter cells. Many of the proteins involved with cytokinesis are ancient, present long before the first Metazoa arose about 800 million years ago.
Glotzer has been studying animal cell division for several decades, focusing on how cells determine where to divide. In animal cells, a structure called the mitotic spindle segregates the chromosomes before the cells divide; it also dictates the position where cell division occurs. Glotzer and his team homed in on a set of three proteins—Kif23, Cyk4, and Ect2—that bind to each other and the spindle, and which are directly involved in establishing the division plane. Close relatives of these proteins had only been found in animals previously.
Two of these proteins, Kif23 and Cyk4, form a stable protein complex called centralspindlin that Glotzer and his colleagues discovered more than 20 years ago. Not only does centralspindlin contribute to division plane positioning, but it also generates a bridge between the two incipient daughter cells.
The cells that make up non-germline tissues and organs are called somatic cells, which are not passed on to the next generation. Germline cells are special because they can become any cell type. During the development of sperm and eggs, these cells also recombine the chromosomes they inherited from their parents, generating genetic diversity. While centralspindlin-dependent bridges are generally severed in somatic cells, the germlines of most animals have cells that remain connected by stable bridges.
Tracking down the proteins
Given the recent explosion in genome sequence data now available for a wide range of animals, Glotzer first wanted to determine if the two proteins that make up the centralspindlin complex, as well as Ect2, the regulatory protein that binds to it, were present and well conserved in all animals. During his analysis for this study, which was published in Current Biology, he found that all branches of animals have all three of these proteins.
Studies of these proteins in species commonly used in the lab discovered common patterns that are linked to their known functions. Using Google DeepMind’s AlphaFold AI platform (developed by UChicago alum and recent Nobel Laureate John Jumper), Glotzer was able to predict the interactions among these different proteins and found that every interaction is likely conserved across all animals. This suggests that these proteins were all in place at the beginning of the animal kingdom more than 800 million years ago and have not undergone any dramatic changes since that time.
Next, Glotzer wondered whether any related proteins could be found in single-celled organisms. He identified somewhat related proteins in choanoflagellates, the group of single-celled creatures most closely related to animals. Alphafold predicted that some of them can form a complex somewhat like centralspindlin. Though related, these complexes are clearly distinct from centralspindlin, and they lack the sequences that allow Ect2 to bind to the structure. Remarkably, some choanoflagellate species that have this complex can form colonies via incomplete cytokinesis too.
“Pre-metazoan cells have mechanisms of dividing and separating, probably with some themes and variations. Then this protein complex allowed cells to stop at the stage just before separation,” Glotzer said. “Maybe multicellular life evolved because of a genetic change that prevented cells from fully separating.”
“A mutation that disrupted the assembly of centralspindlin is what allowed my colleagues and me to find these proteins in the first place, more than 25 years ago,” he continued. “And it appears that the evolution of this exact same region contributed to the evolution of animal life on the planet, which is mind blowing.”
The study, “A key role for centralspindlin and Ect2 in the development of multicellularity and the emergence of Metazoa,” was supported by the National Institutes of Health.
Ryan Gosling puts the “not” in “Astronaut” in the new trailer for “Project Hail Mary.”
The upcoming sci-fi film, based on Andy Weir‘s novel of the same name, stars Gosling as middle school teacher turned reluctant astronaut Ryland Grace, who’s tasked with saving humanity from the effects of a dimming sun. However, when he wakes up from a coma as the sole survivor aboard a spaceship, he must overcome his amnesia to remember where he is and why he was sent there.
“It’s an insanely ambitious story that’s massive in scope and it seemed really hard to make, and that’s kind of our bag,” Gosling said of “Project Hail Mary” at CinemaCon in April, where he debuted footage from the film, according to Variety. “This is why we go to the movies. And I’m not just saying it because I’m in it. I’m also saying it because I’m a producer on the film.”
The trailer, released Monday by Amazon MGM Studios, opens with Gosling startling awake on the spacecraft, his hair and beard uncharacteristically long. “I’m several light-years from my apartment,” he proclaims, “and I’m not an astronaut.”
It then jolts back in time to show Grace pre-launch as he learns from Eva Stratt (Sandra Hüller) that if he does not journey into space, everything on Earth will go extinct. According to Stratt, who heads the mission, Grace is the only scientist who might understand what is happening to the sun and surrounding stars.
The trailer, which progresses through an intense montage set to Harry Styles’ “Sign of the Times,” teases Gosling’s signature humor. “I can’t even moonwalk!” the “Barbie” actor declares at one point. (Gosling portrayed moonwalker Neil Armstrong in another recent space movie, Damien Chazelle’s “First Man.”)
Everything leads up to Grace meeting an alien, who isn’t shown in full — but fans of the book know it plays an integral role in saving planet Earth and beyond.
The film, directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, marks the second book-to-movie adaptation for Weir, whose novel “The Martian” became an Oscar-nominated 2015 blockbuster starring Matt Damon. An adaptation for his book “Artemis” is also in development with the same directing team.
Valve has added a new performance monitor to Steam that can help you understand why a game may or may not be running smoothly. Not only does it break out a game’s overall frame rate, it can tell you how many of those frames were generated by techniques like Nvidia’s DLSS or AMD’s FSR, according to a post.
The change is included as part of an update to the Steam Client that’s available now, though Valve notes that this “first version” focuses on “Windows users and on the most common GPU hardware.”
The company says the new performance monitor currently offers up to four different levels of detail: a single FPS value, FPS details, CPU and GPU utilization, and “FPS, CPU, GPU & RAM Full Details.” The more you choose to show, the more of your screen will be taken up by the performance monitor.
Steam previously offered a simple FPS counter, but separating out generated frames from the frames fully rendered by your graphics cores can help you better understand key differences between what you see and how a game feels. “Frame generation can’t help with things like input latency that matter to competitive gamers, but it can make things look visually smoother on today’s high refresh rate monitors,” Valve says in a detailed support document about the performance monitor.
In practice, what that should mean is that you can see whether your game feels like it’s running at just 30 fps because it actually is running at 30 fps inside the game engine, even though you’re seeing a visually smoother image due to Nvidia and AMD’s added “fake frames.” (It’s a whole debate in the PC gaming community, and it appears Valve isn’t taking sides here.)
Valve has already given handheld gamers a taste of these quick insights by building tools like MangoHud into the Steam Deck and SteamOS, which similarly let you monitor your CPU, graphics, RAM, and carefully ration out your battery life. But having a way to do so built into desktop Steam will make the insights much more accessible to many more gamers.
In the future, Valve says that it has plans to “add some additional pieces of data to the performance overlay going forward, to detect certain common bad hardware performance scenarios, and to show a larger summary of your game’s performance in the overlay itself when you hit shift-tab.”
Bollywood star Aamir Khan’s return to the big screen after a three-year hiatus has been far from ordinary. Sitaare Zameen Par (2025) which translates to “stars on Earth”, is the first major Bollywood production to feature a mostly neurodivergent cast.
A remake of the 2018 Spanish film Campeones, the story follows a mouthy, knuckle-headed basketball coach, Gulshan (Aamir Khan), who is put in charge of a team of players with intellectual disabilities.
The film slowly grows into itself, much like its characters, but ultimately delivers what the trailer promises: a heartwarming, humorous and uplifting celebration of our individual differences.
In an era of blockbuster spectacles, Aamir Khan Productions brings back a kind of Bollywood storytelling we haven’t seen in a while – something sincere, gentle and quietly revolutionary.
Who is Aamir Khan?
Aamir Khan was born in Mumbai in 1965, and started his acting career as a child actor in his uncle’s film Yaadon Ki Baaraat (1973).
Khan is now one of Bollywood’s most enduring and respected figures. He is one of the iconic “three Khans”, alongside Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan (the three are unrelated), who have dominated Indian cinema since the 1990s.
Film stars Aamir Khan, Salman Khan and Shah Rukh Khan are dubbed the ‘three Khans’ of Bollywood. AP
But unlike his Khan counterparts, Aamir Khan has carved a unique career path built on both commercial success and socially-driven storytelling.
He is known for championing social causes through cinema. In one 2015 article, media studies professor Vamsee Juluri referred to him as a “national conscience figure”.
Khan’s films don’t just entertain; they challenge norms and often spark national conversations on important issues.
From producing Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India (2001), India’s Oscar-nominated colonial-era sports epic, to his directorial debut Taare Zameen Par (2007), a moving portrait of a child with dyslexia, Khan’s work often brings underrepresented stories to the mainstream.
Lagaan follows farmers from a small Indian village under British colonial rule. The British challenge the farmers to a game of cricket, in exchange for an exemption from paying the land tax (‘lagaan’). IMDb
His film PK (2014) challenges religious dogma. Meanwhile, Dangal (2016) is a boundary-pushing film based on real-life female wrestlers from rural India, and is also Bollywood’s highest-grossing film of all time.
Beyond the box office, Khan has hosted the TV show Satyamev Jayate (2012–14), which is also the national emblem of India, meaning “truth alone triumphs”.
This show tackles various topics considered taboo in Indian societies, including female feticide, domestic violence and caste discrimination. It has reached millions of households, and even ignited parliamentary debates.
Khan is also popular in other countries, including China, where his films 3 Idiots (2009), Dangal (2016) and Secret Superstar (2017) were massive hits that resonated with audiences for their universal themes.
In Dangal (2016), Mahavir (Aamir Khan) trains his two daughters in wrestling. IMDb
Sitaare Zameen Par marks his return following the commercial underperformance of Laal Singh Chaddha (2022), an Indian remake of Forrest Gump (1994).
Sitaare (stars) who make the film shine
Directed by R.S. Prasanna, Sitaare Zameen Par enjoyed a strong opening weekend at the box office.
It stars ten individuals with special needs as they prepare for a basketball tournament under the direction of their coach (Khan). This plot alone makes the film a significant entry to Indian cinema, which often ignores or misrepresents disability.
The neurodivergent stars of Sitaare Zameen Par are aged between 18 and 42. Aamir Khan Productions.
Despite early online trolling and negativity, the film depicts its neurodivergent characters not as victims, or “inspirations”, but simply as people with dreams, struggles and joy.
One line captures this beautifully: “Everyone sticks to their own normal. We each have our own normal.”
Aamir Khan, now 60, plays a key role in the film, but doesn’t dominate it. Instead, his younger co-stars shine. The result is a healing film that celebrates inclusion, while being full of joy and humanity.
Stories that matter
No film is perfect. But it’s hard to dislike a film made with so much compassion.
Bollywood as an industry has increasingly leaned into action-packed blockbusters, as well as nationalist and Hindu-centred narratives (such as in the 2022 film Brahmāstra).
While many of these offer thrills, few deliver the kind of emotional and social depth that once defined Hindi cinema’s global appeal. Much like Taare Zameen Par – a spiritual prequel to the new release – did 18 years ago, Sitaare Zameen Par invites the audience to slow down and reflect.
In Taare Zameen Par (2007), Khan plays a neurotypical teacher who helps a student with dyslexia. IMDb
It prompts neurotypical viewers to see people with Down’s syndrome as part of the same emotional universe as them – and to laugh with, not at them.
In an interview, Khan explains how the film goes further than just neurodivergent representation, to participation:
In [Taare Zameen Par], it’s the teacher, Nikumbh, a supposedly neuro-typical person, who helps the child with dyslexia. In this film, ten neuro-atypical people are helping the coach, Gulshan. I feel Sitare takes the discourse of the first film ten steps ahead, especially in our country where people need to be sensitised to the topic of neurodivergence.
Last week, India’s president, Droupadi Murmu, attended a special screening and met the cast. The visit sent a clear messsage: stories like this matter.
With Sitaare Zameen Par, Aamir Khan returns to what he does best: using film as both a mirror and message for Indian society. While it won’t change the world overnight, it will make viewers see the world, and each other, a little differently.
The Western Force thanks departing players Ryan Coxon, Tom Horton, Atu Moli, Reesjan Pasitoa, Matt Proctor and Sio Tomkinson for their service to the Club.
The departure of the sextet comes after Saturday’s tour game against the British and Irish Lions following the conclusion of the 2025 Super Rugby Pacific season.
The Club acknowledges their contributions and service, wishing them all well for the future. They are forever Force.
Coxon, 27, spent two seasons with the Force, joining the Club in the 2024 season on an injury cover contract. The affable loosehead prop played 19 Super Rugby games for the Force.
Horton joined the Force prior to the 2023 season and started every game in the 2024 season. The tough 28-year-old hooker played 34 Super Rugby games for the Force across three campaigns.
Former All Blacks front-rower Moli, 30, spent two years at the Force, overcoming a significant hip injury in his first season to play 10 games off the bench in the 2025 Super Rugby season.
Homegrown utility back Pasitoa joined the Force in 2022 after a stint with the ACT Brumbies. He played 20 Super Rugby games for the Force, having missed the 2023 and 2024 seasons due to significant injuries before making a return in 2025. The Club have released him early at his request in order to play NPC in New Zealand.
One-cap All Blacks midfielder Proctor joined the Force prior to the 2025 Super Rugby season but missed the whole campaign with a shoulder injury, before running out in Force blue for the first time in Saturday’s Lions game.
Tomkinson also joined the Force prior to the 2025 Super Rugby season. The 29-year-old New Zealand-born midfielder played 10 games, all starts, and scored one try.
SAN DIEGO, June 30, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Robbins LLP informs stockholders that a class action was filed on behalf of investors who purchased or otherwise acquired Sarepta Therapeutics, Inc. (NASDAQ: SRPT) securities between June 22, 2023 and June 24, 2025. Sarepta is a commercial-stage biopharmaceutical company that focuses on RNA and gene therapies for the treatment of rare diseases. During the class period, Sarepta was engaged in the development of therapies to treat Duchenne muscular dystrophy (“Duchenne”), including ELEVIDYS. ELEVIDYS is a prescription gene therapy intended for a limited category of people with Duchenne.
For more information, submit a form, email attorney Aaron Dumas, Jr., or give us a call at (800) 350-6003.
The Allegations: Robbins LLP is Investigating Allegations that Sarepta Therapeutics, Inc. (SRPT) Mislead Investors Regarding the Safety its ELEVIDYS Drug
According to the complaint, during the class period, defendants failed to disclose that: (i) ELEVIDYS posed significant safety risks to patients; (ii) ELEVIDYS trial regimes and protocols failed to detect severe side effects; and (iii) the severity of adverse events from ELEVIDYS treatment would cause the Company to halt recruitment and dosing in ELEVIDYS trials, attract regulatory scrutiny, and create greater risk around the therapy’s present and expanded approvals.
Plaintiff alleges that on March 18, 2025, Sarepta issued a safety update on ELEVIDYS announcing that a patient had died following treatment with ELEVIDYS. On this news, Sarepta’s stock price fell $27.81 per share, or 27.44%, to close at $73.54 per share on March 18, 2025. Then, on June 15, 2025, Sarepta disclosed a second patient had died of acute liver failure following treatment with ELEVIDYS. The Company announced it was suspending shipments of ELEVIDYS for non-ambulatory patients while Sarepta took time to evaluate trial regimens and discussed findings with regulatory authorities. Sarepta also revealed that it was pausing dosing in one of its ELEVIDYS clinical studies. On this news, Sarepta’s stock price fell $15.24 per share, or 42.12%, to close at $20.91 per share on June 15, 2025.
Finally, on June 24, 2025, the FDA announced it was investigating the risk of acute liver failure with serious outcomes following treatment with ELEVIDYS. On this nes, Sarepta’s stock price fell $1.52 per share, or 8.01%, to close at $17.46 per share on June 25, 2025.
What Now: You may be eligible to participate in the class action against Sarepta Therapeutics, Inc. Shareholders who want to serve as lead plaintiff for the class must file a motion for lead plaintiff by August 25, 2025. The lead plaintiff is a representative party who acts on behalf of other class members in directing the litigation. You do not have to participate in the case to be eligible for a recovery. If you choose to take no action, you can remain an absent class member. For more information, click here.
All representation is on a contingency fee basis. Shareholders pay no fees or expenses.
About Robbins LLP: A recognized leader in shareholder rights litigation, the attorneys and staff of Robbins LLP have been dedicated to helping shareholders recover losses, improve corporate governance structures, and hold company executives accountable for their wrongdoing since 2002.
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Santiago Yahuarcani’s Amazon is no longer the place he painted as a child. The rainforest scenes of parrots, anacondas and jaguars that he and his brothers used to sell to riverboat tourists for a dollar apiece have given way to visions of a landscape that is darker, more despoiled and more desperate than it was six decades ago.
However, as his first solo international exhibition – at the Whitworth in Manchester – will show, the old beauties and mysteries have not faded completely. His work is populated by shape-shifting spirits, mermaids waltzing with pink river dolphins, enormous pipe-smoking lizards and shamans who trap their adversaries in rum bottles, but they exist alongside depictions of the genocidal crimes of the past and the ecocidal crimes of the present. Oil refineries are consumed by fire, rubber trees weep tears of sap, forest spirits are displaced by drought, and memories of a century-old slaughter – replete with torn and branded flesh – echo through the forest and down the generations.
“When I was a child, there was a huge abundance of animals and fish in the Amazon,” says the 65-year-old Indigenous Peruvian painter, when we meet in Madrid, at a joint exhibition of work by him and his partner Nereyda López. “There was a lot of land to make into farmsteads and there were a lot of animals to hunt. But people have come and taken land – hectares of land, kilometres of land – and they’ve come for the wood and the gold, too.”
The artist and his family are all too aware of what happens when the Amazon attracts the greedy gaze of the outside world. Today, they are the last 12 members of the White Heron clan of the Uitoto nation still living in Peru. Just over a century ago, Yahuarcani’s grandfather, then 16, was forced from Colombia to Peru during the genocide that was waged against the Indigenous population of the Putumayo region during the rubber boom. The painter was five or six when he learned what had happened at La Chorrera rubber station.
“My grandfather would call us together at night and tell us about the era of rubber,” he says. “He told us how the bosses arrived with rifles and started to force the Indigenous people to collect the sap of trees for rubber. They demanded 50kg of sap from each person every two to three weeks. They gave them the materials they needed to get the sap and they gave them food, but not enough food.”
Anyone coming back with less than 50kg was punished. Some were thrown into a hole 15 metres deep. Others had an ear hacked off. “There was also a guy, my grandfather told me, who’d make everyone watch as he cut off a lump of your flesh with a knife. They wanted to scare people so they’d get their 50 kilos.”
Then came the time when the bosses decided to plant sugar cane, coffee and corn for the women to harvest. “These women worked with their babies on their backs,” says Yahuarcani. “One baby started to cry because of the heat of the sun. The overseers came and took the little boy from his mother’s back and threw him on the fire.”
When the inevitable uprising took place, the response was characteristically barbaric. Men, women and children were burned alive in a large house where they had sought refuge. Those who escaped the flames were shot. “My grandfather told me that, a month after the fire, thousands of butterflies of a kind never before seen in the Amazon began to sprout from the site,” says Yahuacari. “All different kinds of butterflies with all different kinds of colours. My grandfather told me they were the spirits of the victims, of the people who had been burned.”
Those atrocities are recounted in one painting – called The Stone-Hearted Man – that shows gangs of pale men in white hats and with pistols in their belts branding, decapitating and burning their way across a stretch of rainforest that has become a hell.All around them are the charred and broken bodies of Indigenous people.
A century later, the rainforest is once again besieged. “Today, Indigenous groups are having to fight back,” says Yahuarcani. “We have to fight to protect our vegetation, our trees and to reforest.” But the odds are not in their favour. While more and more outsiders are coming to the Amazon in search of land, timber, gold and oil, many of the region’s young people are abandoning their homes in search of education and employment. Respect for the rainforest is dwindling.
‘I show our myths, our problems’ … Yahuarcani. Photograph: Julia Moro, courtesy Crisis Gallery
Whenever they set out to hunt or fish, the Uitoto make an offering to the guardian of the forest animals: “He’s small and furry like a monkey and has the face of an 80-year-old person.” And, unlike the logging and mining corporations, they never take more than they need. “In the Amazon,” he says, “when we want to eat, we go to our supermarket – it’s in the mountains, in the jungle, where there are fish and fruits. You bring home what you need and you don’t destroy everything. God has said that man should not destroy nature, he should take care of it, because it is his home, too. You can’t destroy your own house.”
If the artist’s subject matter has changed over the years, his techniques have not. Yahuarcani has always created his works by applying paint prepared from pigments, seeds, leaves and roots, to large sheets of llanchama, a cloth made from the bark of the ojé tree. His works are often inspired by the hallucinations brought on by the ritual ingestion of tobacco, coca, ayahuasca and mushrooms – substances long used by the Indigenous peoples of the Amazon when in search of help, knowledge or revelation.
While getting llanchama requires the skills he learned from his bark-cutter grandfather, the use of hallucinogens harnesses and honours the cosmology, myths and traditions of Yahuarcani’s people as he strives to draw attention to the threats they and the forest face. Perhaps the greatest of those menaces is indifference. Yahuarcani’s home town of Pebas, which lies on a bend in the river as it meanders from north-east Peru towards Colombia, is as far removed as it could be from the artistic, political and media centres of the coastal capital, Lima. As a result, getting his work and its messages noticed has been a struggle.
Yahuarcani is polite but insistent as he reflects on the difficulties that he and other Indigenous artists – not least his son Rember – experience when it comes to visibility and exhibition space. “I use my work to show our myths,” he says. “How our culture used to be, how we came to have the problems we now have. But it’s been very tough because we were from the Amazon and we were Indigenous. We weren’t allowed to exhibit in the museums, or do the interviews, because we were always put to one side.” Artists from Lima “have always had more opportunities and more press”.
Part of the problem, he says, lies in Peru’s own view of its culture and history. “When we were in school, we were taught about the Incas. About how the Incas built Machu Picchu, and so on. But there was nothing about us or our history, and that’s been one of our complaints. Our stories aren’t in the textbooks.” Yet he is adamant that this is a history people need – and want – to know about. When he exhibited a picture of the Putumayo atrocities in Lima a decade ago, “the newspapers and the magazines were saying, ‘Look at this! Look at this!’ But the authorities were not at all interested.”
Yahuarcani has been buoyed by the enthusiastic reaction to the Madrid show – even if it has meant braving the heat and chaos of the Spanish summer. He hopes the Manchester exhibition will be equally well received. But the recognition has been as hard won as it has been belated. Time is running out and, as one of his recent works plainly shows, the Amazon is changing rapidly and irrevocably. Painted earlier this year, Optic Fibre in the Depths of the Amazon River is a riotous, funny and faintly disturbing picture that shows dolphins, frogs, fish and turtles clutching mobile phones as technology reaches ever farther into the rainforest. One or two of the smarter fish are ringing their friends to let them know where the fishers are gathered so they can avoid them.
The current cycle of expansion, encroachment and exploitation appears unstoppable. And if the forest goes then so does a branch of the Uitoto, their way of life, and their half-forgotten history. “I hope Peru will do something about these issues,” says Yahuarcani. “That there will be a book of these stories so young people can learn what happened to their grandparents. Today, we are the only family of the White Heron clan. There are no more. When we disappear, the White Heron ends.”
