Backpackers the inside story

SEE VIDEO CLIP
 

New film Gringo trails sets out to look at the long term effects of backpackers on cultures, economies and environments. A must see still looking for support.

Gringo Trails is about tourism, one of the most powerful global industries of our time, and it starts with backpackers. They may well be the key to opening the door in developing countries. The documentary looks at the long term effects of travelers on cultures, economies, and environments worldwide through their most important souvenirs… their stories.

Pegi Vail, the film’s director, explores the topic through both personal and professional perspectives: she is a former backpacker, now an anthropologist whose research focuses on backpacker tourism.

Gringo Trails follows travelers and locals in Thailand, Bolivia, and West Africa (Burkina Faso and Mali)– looking at all sides of the cultural encounter. It also considers the complicated relationships that can arise when host countries are looking for economic opportunities and travelers are seeking authentic experiences.

The film follows travelers’ stories since the 1970s, shortly after the first Lonely Planet guidebooks were published–helping to usher in the current mass backpacker phenomenon. Locals reflecting on backpackers are highlighted in the film, while archival photos and footage show the influence of 19th-21st century travelogues, movies, and novels on our understanding of a place.

The narrative journeys with the intrepid solo traveler and the backpacker who follows, to the role of "backpackaging" and beyond. There will be one final shoot for the film in Bolivia after first filming there in 2000 and 2002. The story featured forms a positive counterpoint to that of tourism development at Haad Rin on Koh Pha-Ngan in Thailand, featured in the trailer.

Pegi Vail received her Ph.D. in anthropology from NYU and currently teaches in the Anthropology Department at Columbia University. She has taught documentary filmmaking in NYU’s Culture and Media Program, on tourist productions through NYU’s Performance Studies Department, and leads documentary workshops globally, most recently in Azerbaijan. Vail is a former Fulbright scholar who serves as guest lecturer for the Columbia Alumni Travel Study Program and National Geographic.

As a curator, she works with NYC arts and cultural institutions such as Smithsonian, NMAI, AMNH, and MoMA with colleagues and through organizations such as The Moth, a storytelling collective she was on the founding board for.

Gringo Trails is her first feature film, funded in part by NYSCA and fiscally sponsored by Women Make Movies. Previously, she directed the award-winning short documentary screened internationally, The Dodger’s Sym-phony (WNET/PBS) and produced the shorts, Steaming with the Prez and Firebird, which premiered at Jazz at Lincoln Center during the MIAAC Film Festival with Firebird director Melvin Estrella. Vail and Estrella are producing Gringo Trails together.

Valere Tjolle
Valere Tjolle is editor of the Sustainable Tourism Report Suite, special offer at: www.travelmole.com/stories/1142003.php