Documentary

A Defender of His People examines how the legend of El Tepozteco serves as a source of identity and a behavior model for the tepoztecos. El Tepozteco is not just a legendary figure: he is actively present in the lives of his people. His voice is heard in the wind, and when necessary he appears in person. He is credited with driving away a federal SWAT team, and on one occasion even wrote a letter asking the tepoztecos to care for the environment.

Welcome to Tejalpa, Mexico in the year 2000. It's one weird and dislocated place! This ancient Indian town has kept many of its traditions alive, including the fiesta celebrated each year on October 18th. On this day the very best of the year's agricultural harvest is offered to the spirits of the town's main spring and aquifier. The annual tradition survives despite a rapid process of suburban sprawl and less-than-responsible development, which pollutes the same water that is worshipped every year! Using a mish mosh of aesthetics as diverse as the present day population of Tejalpa, the film demonstrates the clashes of modernity, tradition, communal stability, land disputes and ecological crisis that exist in the town of Tejalpa.

And the March Continues! combines documentary and narrative forms to present a history of the lesbian movement in Mexico from its origins to the present. Testimonies from Mexican lesbians and movement leaders give impressions of daily life in their country.

Caesar and Jonathan are two young kids, which found music by separate ways and decide to hold onto it with all their strength. But things will not be easy for them. Beyond their musical talent, they must fight against many obstacles: the educational system, the distances of a great city and the refusal of their own family. "Before Everything" shows what happens in a country where the culture and the musical education simply don't fit in a society full of prejudices.

The Biobío is one of the longest rivers in Chile, having its source in the Andes and flowing into the Pacific Ocean. In 1997 the Spanish hydro-electric company ENDESA decided to build a dam in the Biobío River to form the Ralco hydroelectric power station. In May, 2004, the flooding of the Ralco valley started and 70 indigenous families were displaced and "invited to live in the high mountains" at a height of 2,000 meters. Mapuche spokespeople who have denounced the situation of their brothers have been persecuted and convicted by the Chilean courts, using anti-terrorist laws developed under Pinochet, although none have ever been found in possession of a firearm or other weapons. “Switch off” is a tale about a usurped nation, about a forgotten genocide, about globalization, about one river.

Near the city of Muzquiz, Coahuila, lives a small population of black people, El Nacimiento de los Negros, descendants of the ones called black Seminoles in the United States. The black Seminoles were of African origin who assimilated with many North American indigenous groups from the Florida region. Together these people formed the Seminole confederation, (the word Seminole has its origin on the Spanish word “cimarrón”).

Prepare for the journey as an unknown, a nothing, no one. Prepare to leave everything from South and Central America behind and travel alone with a vague sense of direction and the echo of your family left in your ears. Prepare to face the same intimidation and corruptive danger in Mexico as you will eventually find 1,300 miles north, when you cross into the United States–if you live through it. As rich nations sharpen their borders and differences, the poorest peoples continue to blur them in the search for liberties too universally held to be claimed by any flag. Through this burning hunger, we are drawn into DeNADIE, and through its intimate lens and enduring crew, we find ourselves confronted with a story of immigration we only thought we understood.

An average of 400 children are born in Nicaragua every day, 100 of them to adolescent mothers. This documentary narrates the lives of three such adolescents: 14-year-old Kenia, from a poor neighborhood in Managua; 15-year-old Blanca, who lives deep in the mountains; and Viviana, a 16-year-old Miskito indigenous girl from the North Atlantic region.

Framed by the beautiful poetry of the oppressed Cuban poet Reinaldo Arenas, this revealing documentary features memorable portraits of five gay men and one transsexual woman living in and around Havana. Their disparate stories and candid interviews dispel myths while demonstrating a range of experience, opinion and social status.

Southern Mexico. It's hot. An inferno. Here, like everywhere else, people are suffering and dying. In their homes, on the street. A young girl kills herself with a shotgun. An old man has a heart attack as he lies with a prostitute. A cock-fighter is accused of assaulting a bus. A man finds a dead body in the river. What do they have in common? They all appeared in La Nota Roja (The Red Page): the crime section of the local newspaper.

El Inmigrante is a documentary film that examines the Mexican and American border crisis by telling the story of Eusebio de Haro, a young Mexican migrant who was shot and killed during one of his journeys north. The film presents a distinct humanitarian focus in which story and character take precedent over policy and empiricism.  Towards this end “El Inmigrante” examines the perspectives of a diverse cast of players in this border narrative. A cast which includes the de Haro family, the community of Brackettville, Texas–where Eusebio was shot, members of vigilante border militias in Arizona, the horseback border patrol in El Paso, and migrants en route to an uncertain future in the United States.

"The Veil of Berta" is the delicate narration of the story of Berta Quintremán, an elderly indigenous woman who at the age of 88 leads the last group opposing the construction of the Ralco project, a gigantic dam that will stop the flow of the Bio-Bio River and flood the land where her native Pehuenche community, Ralco Lepoy, have lived for centuries.

ERENDIRA IKIKUNARI is a beautifully shot action film that recreates the 16th century legend of Eréndira, a young Purépecha woman who became an icon of bravery during the destruction of indigenous Mexico by the Spanish conquistadors. This feature length film was shot entirely in the original Purépecha language.

After a military coup overthrew the democratically elected Socialist government of Chile on September 11, 1973, the capital’s National Stadium was the scene of the indiscriminate mass detentions of more than 12,000 suspected dissidents, and the brutal interrogations, torture, and executions they underwent. This film is the first in-depth investigation into the chilling events that took place in the stadium. With the testimony of more than 30 witnesses – former prisoners, priests, soldiers, journalists, nurses, and neighbors – this film provides a detailed and moving account of the experiences of those detained in the stadium. This courageous film unearths a part of Chilean history that is still taboo 30 years later. It opens with the 2000 presidential elections held in the stadium, where one of the vote counters who was also a detainee muses on the irony that in people were exercising their democratic rights “in the same place where people were detained and robbed of their freedom.”

FAVELA RISING documents a man and a movement, a city divided and a favela (Brazilian squatter settlement) united. Haunted by the murders of his family and many of his friends, Anderson Sá is a former drug-trafficker who turns social revolutionary in Rio de Janeiro’s most feared slum. Through hip-hop music, the rhythms of the street, and Afro-Brazilian dance he rallies his community to counteract the violent oppression enforced by teenage drug armies and sustained by corrupt police.

GYPSIES WITHOUT TENTS portrays the lives of Chile’s estimated 15 – 20,000 Romanies (Gypsies) by documenting the stories of three families and their everyday struggles to reconcile their traditional culture with the advantages offered by cultural assimilation. The film brings us into the families’ homes, their places of worship, the children’s schools, and the markets where the men trade, where the protagonists speak, in the Romani language as well as Spanish, about their lives and their concerns as Chileans and as Romanies. We are shown through the experiences of the subjects themselves the shifting terrain that is Romani identity in the Americas.

In this brilliant and hilarious parody, filmmaker Greg Berger takes on the theme of Mexican perspectives of the United States, its citizens, and its imperial project by turning them on their ear. During the invasion of Iraq in the spring of 2003, a misplaced gringo in Mexico City helplessly watches the atrocities through the lens of Mexican television news. His despair turns to hope when he observes some of the millions of Mexico City street vendors who fight their own daily “war” for survival on the streets.

The jungle madness known as Grissi Siknis is a contagious, natural syndrome that occurs among the Miskito of Eastern Central America, effecting mainly young women.  Symptoms include long periods of anxiety, nausea, dizziness, irrational anger and fear, interlaced with periods of frenzy in which the victims loses consciousness, and often  believes devils are beating them.