The Sin Fronteras Film Festival is a student organized event devoted to films about Latin America and by Latin American filmmakers. Each year the festival is organized by a group of students from various departments who are members of SOLAS. The festival has been generously funded by a variety of UNM groups and academic departments. Thanks to the time and money donated by various students, staff, faculty, and community members 2014's festival is a COMPLETELY FREE event open to the UNM and greater Albuquerque community. All screenings will be held at the Guild Cinema space is limited so arrive early to get a seat!
Please see below for this year’s schedule and a brief description of each film. You can find the film trailers on a different page here. If you have any questions please feel free to contact us at SOLAS@unm.edu. We hope you will join us!
Please see below for this year’s schedule and a brief description of each film. You can find the film trailers on a different page here. If you have any questions please feel free to contact us at SOLAS@unm.edu. We hope you will join us!
Photo Gallery of Opening Night
Friday, February 21
Granito: How to Nail a Dictator
Pamela Yates / 103 min. / 2011
*Screening with Director Pamela Yates and Producer Paco de Onis
7:00 PM
Sometimes a film makes history; it doesn't just document it. So it is with "Granito: How to Nail a Dictator”, the astonishing film by Pamela Yates. Part political thriller, part memoir, Yates transports us back in time through a riveting, haunting tale of genocide and returns to the present with a cast of characters joined by destiny and the quest to bring a malevolent dictator to justice.
In January 2012, after 30 years of legal impunity, former Guatemalan general and dictator Efraín Ríos Montt was indicted by a Guatemalan court for crimes against humanity. Decades after the events, he was charged with committing genocide against the country's poor, Mayan people in the 1980s becoming the first former head of state to be tried in his own country for genocide.
As if a watchful Maya god were weaving back together threads of a story unraveled by the passage of time, forgotten by most, our characters become integral to the overarching narrative of wrongs done and justice sought that they have pieced together, each adding their granito, their tiny grain of sand, to the epic tale.
SOLAS Facebook Event
Sin Fronteras Granito Page
Skilight Pictures -- Granito Website
Special thank you to the following departments for making this event possible: Department of History, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, International Studies Institute Department of Political Science, Interdisciplinary Film and Digital Media Program, Department of Sociology
Pamela Yates / 103 min. / 2011
*Screening with Director Pamela Yates and Producer Paco de Onis
7:00 PM
Sometimes a film makes history; it doesn't just document it. So it is with "Granito: How to Nail a Dictator”, the astonishing film by Pamela Yates. Part political thriller, part memoir, Yates transports us back in time through a riveting, haunting tale of genocide and returns to the present with a cast of characters joined by destiny and the quest to bring a malevolent dictator to justice.
In January 2012, after 30 years of legal impunity, former Guatemalan general and dictator Efraín Ríos Montt was indicted by a Guatemalan court for crimes against humanity. Decades after the events, he was charged with committing genocide against the country's poor, Mayan people in the 1980s becoming the first former head of state to be tried in his own country for genocide.
As if a watchful Maya god were weaving back together threads of a story unraveled by the passage of time, forgotten by most, our characters become integral to the overarching narrative of wrongs done and justice sought that they have pieced together, each adding their granito, their tiny grain of sand, to the epic tale.
SOLAS Facebook Event
Sin Fronteras Granito Page
Skilight Pictures -- Granito Website
Special thank you to the following departments for making this event possible: Department of History, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, International Studies Institute Department of Political Science, Interdisciplinary Film and Digital Media Program, Department of Sociology
| Granito Press Kit -- Complete |
| Granito Press Kit -- Spanish |
Saturday, February 22
Don Ca
Patricia Ayala Ruiz / 90 min. / 2012
Colombia
11:00 AM
Don Ca is the portrait of a character so rich and complex, a man that is not easy to classify under one label. Heir to the best and worst of Colombian society, he decided to change his life in a libertarian fashion where true happiness means to desire little in order to possess everything. But the world does not forgive, conflict lurks and paradises are lost. Almost forty years after choosing a surprising path through life, Don Ca wonders whether he should give up his universe, one that is located in the Colombian Pacific that smells of jungle and rivers, but also of tension, pain and danger.
SOLAS Facebook Event
Don Ca Official Site
Patricia Ayala Ruiz / 90 min. / 2012
Colombia
11:00 AM
Don Ca is the portrait of a character so rich and complex, a man that is not easy to classify under one label. Heir to the best and worst of Colombian society, he decided to change his life in a libertarian fashion where true happiness means to desire little in order to possess everything. But the world does not forgive, conflict lurks and paradises are lost. Almost forty years after choosing a surprising path through life, Don Ca wonders whether he should give up his universe, one that is located in the Colombian Pacific that smells of jungle and rivers, but also of tension, pain and danger.
SOLAS Facebook Event
Don Ca Official Site
Más allá del Mall
Miguel Alvear/ 52 min. / 2010
Ecuador
1:30 PM
Is there an audience for Latin American movies? These are some of the questions posed by an Ecuadorian filmmaker whose latest movie was a commercial flop. He embarks on a query to find answers to his questions and relief for his despair. His research leads him to a giant contraband market in the port city of Guayaquil, where pirated movies from all over the world are sold for one dollar each. Here, he discovers a number of Ecuadorian low budget movies produced by amateurs, with titles he had never heard of before: from action packed productions to evangelical melodramas.
SOLAS Facebook Event
DocTV Latinoamérica "Mas alla del mall" Official Site
Miguel Alvear/ 52 min. / 2010
Ecuador
1:30 PM
Is there an audience for Latin American movies? These are some of the questions posed by an Ecuadorian filmmaker whose latest movie was a commercial flop. He embarks on a query to find answers to his questions and relief for his despair. His research leads him to a giant contraband market in the port city of Guayaquil, where pirated movies from all over the world are sold for one dollar each. Here, he discovers a number of Ecuadorian low budget movies produced by amateurs, with titles he had never heard of before: from action packed productions to evangelical melodramas.
SOLAS Facebook Event
DocTV Latinoamérica "Mas alla del mall" Official Site
Revolutionary Medicine
Beth Geglia, Jesse Freeston / 40 min / 2013
Honduras
3:00 PM
Since their expulsion from the island of Saint Vincent 215 years ago, the Garifuna have struggled against exclusion, racism, and dispossession of their land and territory. Today, their very first hospital serves as a bastion of self-determination. Revolutionary Medicine: A Story of the First Garifuna Hospital tells the story of how the hospital's alternative health model is transforming communities on Honduras’ Northern Coast and standing as an alternative to the increasingly privatized national health system. Could a remote hospital that runs on solar panels in a community without paved roads or electricity provide a new global model for health care?
The film is co-directed by Beth Geglia and Jesse Freeston. Media makers who have been working in solidarity with Honduran communities since the 2009 military coup.
SOLAS Facebook Event
Revolutionary Medicine Facebook Page
*Since we do not have a trailer for Revolutionary Medicine we have posted some photos from the filmmakers below. Additionally, please follow the links below to a blog composed by Medical Anthropologist Dr. Adrienne Pine of American University, currently teaching at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Honduras, about the trip she recently took with her students to the First Garifuna Hospital.
Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, Day 6 to 10
Beth Geglia, Jesse Freeston / 40 min / 2013
Honduras
3:00 PM
Since their expulsion from the island of Saint Vincent 215 years ago, the Garifuna have struggled against exclusion, racism, and dispossession of their land and territory. Today, their very first hospital serves as a bastion of self-determination. Revolutionary Medicine: A Story of the First Garifuna Hospital tells the story of how the hospital's alternative health model is transforming communities on Honduras’ Northern Coast and standing as an alternative to the increasingly privatized national health system. Could a remote hospital that runs on solar panels in a community without paved roads or electricity provide a new global model for health care?
The film is co-directed by Beth Geglia and Jesse Freeston. Media makers who have been working in solidarity with Honduran communities since the 2009 military coup.
SOLAS Facebook Event
Revolutionary Medicine Facebook Page
*Since we do not have a trailer for Revolutionary Medicine we have posted some photos from the filmmakers below. Additionally, please follow the links below to a blog composed by Medical Anthropologist Dr. Adrienne Pine of American University, currently teaching at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Honduras, about the trip she recently took with her students to the First Garifuna Hospital.
Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, Day 6 to 10
We Women Warriors
Nicole Karsin / 82 min. / 2012
Colombia
4:30 PM
In Colombia’s war-torn indigenous villages, three brave women from distinct tribes use nonviolent resistance to defend their peoples’ survival. Decades of warfare between the guerrillas, and paramilitary groups working with the armed forces imperils Colombia’s 102 aboriginal groups, dozens of which face extinction because of the violence. Despite being trapped in a protracted predicament financed by the drug trade, indigenous women in Colombia are resourcefully leading and creating transformation imbued with hope.
We Women Warriors (Tejiendo Sabiduría) bears witness to neglected human rights catastrophes and interweaves character-driven stories about female empowerment, unshakable courage, and faith in the endurance of indigenous cultures.
SOLAS Facebook Event
We Women Warriors Official Site
Nicole Karsin / 82 min. / 2012
Colombia
4:30 PM
In Colombia’s war-torn indigenous villages, three brave women from distinct tribes use nonviolent resistance to defend their peoples’ survival. Decades of warfare between the guerrillas, and paramilitary groups working with the armed forces imperils Colombia’s 102 aboriginal groups, dozens of which face extinction because of the violence. Despite being trapped in a protracted predicament financed by the drug trade, indigenous women in Colombia are resourcefully leading and creating transformation imbued with hope.
We Women Warriors (Tejiendo Sabiduría) bears witness to neglected human rights catastrophes and interweaves character-driven stories about female empowerment, unshakable courage, and faith in the endurance of indigenous cultures.
SOLAS Facebook Event
We Women Warriors Official Site
A Floresta de Jonathas (Jonathas' Forest)
Sergio Andrade / 98 min. / 2012
Brazil
7:00 PM
Jonathas lives with his parents and his brother, Juliano, in a cottage in a rural area of the Amazon. The family harvests and sells local products at a roadside fruit stand, a place of contact with new friends and novelties from the rest of the world. They meet Milly, a visitor from Ukraine, and the native Kedassere. The group decides to spend the weekend at a campground in the jungle. Against his father's wishes, Jonathas will embark on this adventure. Seduced by Milly and the forest, he undertakes his most transforming journey
SOLAS Facebook Event
A floresta de Jonathas official site
Sergio Andrade / 98 min. / 2012
Brazil
7:00 PM
Jonathas lives with his parents and his brother, Juliano, in a cottage in a rural area of the Amazon. The family harvests and sells local products at a roadside fruit stand, a place of contact with new friends and novelties from the rest of the world. They meet Milly, a visitor from Ukraine, and the native Kedassere. The group decides to spend the weekend at a campground in the jungle. Against his father's wishes, Jonathas will embark on this adventure. Seduced by Milly and the forest, he undertakes his most transforming journey
SOLAS Facebook Event
A floresta de Jonathas official site
Matando Cabos
Alejandro Lozano / 82 min. / 2004
Trailers with English Subtitles at IMDB
Mexico
9:00 PM
In this movie by Aljendro Lozano, Jaque is on the fringe of losing his office job and his girlfriend before a kidnapping mix- up leads him to a crazy night in Mexico City. Hilarity and action ensue as Jaque crosses paths with evil bosses, a retired wrestler, a crazed bus driver, a cannibal, and a parrot. Full of action and dark humor this is a must see for any Pulp Fiction fan. Actors Tony Dalton, Pedro Armandáriz Jr, and Joaquin Cosío deliver an unforgettable ride as they try to fix an ever increasing messed up situation.
SOLAS Facebook Event
Matando Cabos at IMDB
Alejandro Lozano / 82 min. / 2004
Trailers with English Subtitles at IMDB
Mexico
9:00 PM
In this movie by Aljendro Lozano, Jaque is on the fringe of losing his office job and his girlfriend before a kidnapping mix- up leads him to a crazy night in Mexico City. Hilarity and action ensue as Jaque crosses paths with evil bosses, a retired wrestler, a crazed bus driver, a cannibal, and a parrot. Full of action and dark humor this is a must see for any Pulp Fiction fan. Actors Tony Dalton, Pedro Armandáriz Jr, and Joaquin Cosío deliver an unforgettable ride as they try to fix an ever increasing messed up situation.
SOLAS Facebook Event
Matando Cabos at IMDB
Want to share Sin Fronteras with others? Head to the SOLAS Facebook page for a events and further updates!
Below we have included some flyers to share on via email, on a list-serv, or to print and post at your organization. Thank you for your help in getting the word out!
Below we have included some flyers to share on via email, on a list-serv, or to print and post at your organization. Thank you for your help in getting the word out!
| sin_fronteras_flyer_2014.pdf |
| granito_flyer_2014.pdf |
| sin_fronteras_press_kit_2014.pdf |
Special thank you to the following departments and organizations:
The Latin American & Iberian Institute, Spanish and Portuguese Graduate Student Association, Guild Cinema, Weekly Alibi, Instituto Cervantes and the National Hispanic Cultural Center, Department of History, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, International Studies Institute, Department of Political Science, Interdisciplinary Film and Digital Media Program, Department of Sociology
