Indigenous Issues

"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.

Fighting Cholitas is a documentary short produced by Mariam Jobrani, Kenneth Krauss and Teresa Deskins, about a group of bold and fierce female Bolivian wrestlers.  These indigenous, Indian women jump into the ring every Sunday in their traditional, vibrant multilayered skirts and perform the acrobatic maneuvers of Lucha Libre (a blend of Mexican and American professional wrestling).  Fighting Cholitas documents this weekly fight and goes behind the scenes to find out who these women are and what draws them to this unusual sport.

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.

Rarely do rural and urban teenagers have a chance to cross the divide to form friendships. When Christopher’s eighth-grade class learns about Chile’s ethnic diversity, he forms an email penpal relationship with a teenager of Quechuan descent who lives in the desert. This charming and affectionate documentary follows Christopher as he travels from his working class neighborhood in Santiago across the breathtaking Chilean landscape to meet his penpal, a shy but friendly thirteen-year-old named Juan.

In the mountain ranges of southern of Chile, kilometers from the Argentine border, lives the indigenous community Ralco Lepoy. Since 1994, Endesa, the largest electric company in Latin America, has been constructing an hydroelectric mega-center located in this zone. This award winning documentary follows women from the Pehuenches that fight for their land against seemingly impossible odds.

In January of 2004, the Zapatistas of Chiapas celebrated the 10th anniversary of their uprising. However, a thousand miles away in Emiliano Zapata's home state of Morelos, a darker chapter in the indigenous democracy movement was unfolding...