Guatemala: Heart of the Mayan World

This Traveltalk series short visits the village of Chichicastenango, Guatemala and emphasizes the influence of the Mayan culture on its people. It shows how the residents intermingle ancient religious practices with Catholic teachings. Narrator James FitzPatrick introduces, and greets on camera, Father Ildefonso Rossbach, a Catholic priest who ministers to the local population in the village and outlying areas.

A documentary on the war between the Guatemalan military and the Mayan population, with first hand accounts by Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchú.

In a world drifting further away from participatory food production, relying instead on large corporations to feed us, this film asks “What do we lose by giving up our responsibility to produce food?”

Denese Joy Becker, a manicurist living in Iowa, discovers she is indeed Dominga Sic Ruiz, a survivor from a 1982 Guatemalan massacre, when more than 200 people were killed in the small village of Rio Negro, after opposing the construction of a dam, sponsored by World Bank. She then tries to unveil the truth.

During the 2020 pandemic summer, El Colegio de la Desextinción infiltrated into the holidays of four Divine Caste’s descendants. This elite built its wealth on slavery in the sisal plantations of Yucatán, Mexico, at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. Every year these families move to their opulent summer houses at Chicxulub Puerto, built at the same place where the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs hit. In these apocalyptic beaches, seducers of asteroids and conquistadors, we proposed the young heirs to write and star in a film about Chicxulub’s crater, in which they staged their entrepreneur fantasies.This documentary is the result of the political unconsciousness of this peninsular ethnic group.

Documentary Eclectic Sounds of Guatemala, is a medium-length film about the electronic music scene in the Central American country, in which it emerged in the 1990s with the “Common Graves” parties. Later, over the years, record labels and groups of DJs emerged, such as: Cube Culture, Danzón Pérez, Intu Deep, Disco Rebels, among others. Participating in the documentary: Rod V, Carl nunes, Básico 3, Casta, Mickey Franco, Bruxxas, Mncve, Edu Pretz, Junior Rivera, Dubby Dub, Mario Palomo, Mariano Santolino, Gonzo.

The Tipo Tranquilo parties arose from the initiative of three friends (Gabriel, Erick and Alejandro), who were looking for something different in the Guatemalan electronic scene. He realized several factors that affected deejays and true music lovers, for that reason they started this movement of having various parties in different places. Inviting friends in a hidden way, without much publicity, they can only be reached through a map.

Widows is a documentary about the wives of pilots, who have been killed while working on the streets of Guatemala City. Being a van or taxi driver in the Central American country is considered one of the most dangerous jobs in the world.

Jorge Luís Altuve is a young Guatemalan, passionate about mountaineering and a lover of his country. After the COVID-19 crisis and the lack of transparency in the execution of funds by the government of Alejandro Giammattei, he raised a wave of indignation that led thousands of Guatemalans to demonstrate. Jorge Luis attended the central square, when PNC agents began to intimidate the peaceful demonstrators. He and other citizens were arrested without having carried out an act of vandalism.

Claudia Paz y Paz is the head of the Guatemalan Public Prosecutor’s Office. We follow her during her four-year mandate as the Attorney General of one of the world’s most dangerous countries. This documentary closely observes her attempts to break the downward spiral of a society where drug cartels, corruption and violence have become part of daily life. She manages to improve the country’s safety and justice issues but is met with much resistance. Her commitment to the rule of law is her strength as well as her destiny. At what price do four years of service as the Attorney General of Guatemala’s murder paradise come?

A joyous Guatemalan film about the magic and charm of puppetry. This documentary follows the charismatic artists as they make their puppets and perform. Both humorous and socially aware, their themes are drawn from classic stories, local legends and history.

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.

Enduring 28 days of relentless construction labor, Frank struggles to prep a house for painting amidst Phoenix's scorching pandemic summer.

MAXIMÓN - Devil or Saint is a documentary about the controversial Maya deity, also known as San Simon or the drinking and smoking saint of Guatemala. He is a mixture of ancient Maya beliefs and Christianity. The movie concentrates on the people who surround Maximón with their strong personalities, opinions and faith. The documentary gives us a rare view into the rituals and fiestas honoring Maximón. The cult of Maximón is flourishing because he performs miracles. He is also feared and despised because he is used to cast curses that can result in death. Ultimately, Maximón transcends the duality of good and evil, reflecting the Maya cosmovision in which everything in the universe co-exists.

"Mother Tongue" chronicles the first time a documentary film about Guatemalan genocide in Guatemala was translated and dubbed into Maya-Ixil—5.5% of whom were killed during the armed conflict in the 1980s. Told from the perspective of Matilde Terraza, an emerging Ixil leader and the translation project’s coordinator, "Mother Tongue" illuminates the Ixil community’s ongoing work to preserve collective memory.

Five Years North is the coming-of-age story of Luis, an undocumented Guatemalan boy who just arrived alone in New York City. He struggles to work, study, and evade Judy - the Cuban-American ICE officer patrolling his neighborhood.

The Perechú family is afraid that the ancestral costume of their ancestors will disappear, but they see soccer as an opportunity to keep their culture and legacy alive.

In 1979 José Efraín Ríos Montt became a reborn Christian. He was offering a sermon when a group of soldiers burst into his Christian school, and asked him to lead a military coup in 1982. Francisco Chavez Raymundo and his sister were small children when Rios' political actions annihilated their community. In March, 2013 the lives of Francisco Chavez and Rios Montt converge in the same space. Rios is called upon to testify before Guatemalan justice and is confronted by a group of Mayan Ixiles, orphans and widows of the war, Francisco is one of them.

Every day dozens of decommissioned school buses leave the United States on a southward migration that carries them to Guatemala, where they are repaired, repainted, and resurrected as the brightly-colored camionetas that bring the vast majority of Guatemalans to work each day. Since 2006, nearly 1,000 camioneta drivers and fare-collectors have been murdered for either refusing or being unable to pay the extortion money demanded by local Guatemalan gangs. LA CAMIONETA follows one such bus on its transformative journey: a journey between North and South, between life and death, and through an unfolding collection of moments, people, and places that serve to quietly remind us of the interconnected worlds in which we live.

In this Traveltalk series short, we visit a region in Guatemala where the native Indian tribes live like their ancestors, without using most of the benefits of modern man. They not only grow their own vegetables and catch animals to eat, they also cultivate the plants they need to weave fabrics and make natural dyes from various berries and seeds.