Granito: How to Nail a Dictator
Verzio FF Duration: 01:43:00 Granito is a story of destinies joined by Guatemala’s past, and how a documentary film, intertwined with a nation’s turbulent history, emerges as an active player in the present. In 1982, fledgling filmmaker Pamela Yates went to Guatemala to make a movie about the civil...
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| Institution: | Open Society Archives at Central European University |
| Language: | English |
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Skylight Pictures
2011
United States |
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10891/osa:24a97d07-aa20-494d-af42-14f64f488070 |
| Summary: | Verzio FF
Duration: 01:43:00
Granito is a story of destinies joined by Guatemala’s past, and how a documentary film, intertwined with a nation’s turbulent history, emerges as an active player in the present. In 1982, fledgling filmmaker Pamela Yates went to Guatemala to make a movie about the civil war devastating that country. The resulting documentary When the Mountains Tremble centered on guerrillas — including student protestors and indigenous Mayan people — fighting the country’s repressive military government at the time when the outcome of the conflict was uncertain. While filming, Yates was allowed to shoot the only known footage of the army as it carried out the genocide. More than 20 years later, after a change in the government of Guatemala, the country began to investigate the slaughter of the Mayan people, and a war crimes tribunal in Spain even set out to prepare a case to indict the former leaders of the country. Yates realized that excerpts and outtakes from her earlier film might aid the prosecution, and this case forced her to look back and question the role she had played as an observer and filmmaker. |
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| Published: | 2011 |