GRANITO !!

Tuesday was an amazing day!  I had the pleasure of seeing 2 phenomenal documentary films with several students from our class.  We were all blown away, moved and enlightened.  We met remarkable HEROES at the festival.   Those who truly deserve celebrity status and recognition not only at Sundance, but from the global community.  After the film we spoke with Guatemalan forensic anthropologist Fredy Peccerelli.  Fredy, who has a radiant and joyful presence, lives daily with death threats as he works in mass burial pits to exhume and identify bodies of "the disappeared" - victims of the genocide perpetrated by the Guatemalan government and army in the 1980s.   We also met 28 year old Guatemalan attorney Alejandra Garcia Montenegro who has spent her entire young life relentlessly seeking the truth about her father's (labor leader Fernando Garcia) disappearance in 1984 when he was kidnapped by the army and government.  We also spoke with filmmaker Pamela Yates, the director of "Granito," and one of the most courageous persons one could ever imagine on the planet.  The footage shot by Pamela Yates - who risked her life to record - in the 1980s in Guatemala during the period of the genocide has provided critical evidence against Guatemalan officials responsible for killing hundreds of thousands of Mayan citizens.  "Granito" is the story of how Yates' film - "When the Mountains Tremble" - and unused footage from that film has and is assisting in bringing the those responsible for the heinous crimes against the people of Guatemala to justice.

        

DJ Bowen, Virginia McCarthy and Chris Kovar with
Guatemalan Forensic Anthropolgist Fredy Peccerelli.

DJ, Brian House, Chris Kovar, Virginia ,McCarthy, and Jay Surface,
with GRANITO director Pamela Yates (behind Virginia) attorneyAlejandra Garcia Montenegro(in front ofChris Kovar), producer Paco de Onis,  and Fredy Peccerelli.