Long Synopsis
GRANITO: How to Nail a Dictator
Reveals a Documentary Film Colliding with History in a Quest for Justice. In a startling loop of time and memory, Granito shows how a Filmmaker's first documentary has been instrumental to indict Guatemalan ex-dictator Ríos Montt.
"Granito... doesn't simply relate history; it is also part of history."
—Stephen Holden, The New York Times
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. Back in 1982, a young first-time filmmaker, Pamela Yates, had used her seeming naiveté to gain unprecedented access to Ríos Montt, his generals and leftist guerrillas waging a clandestine war deep in the mountains. The resulting film, When the Mountains Tremble (1983) revealed that the Guatemalan army was killing Mayan civilians. As Yates notes in her extraordinary follow-up, Granito: How to Nail a Dictator, "Guatemala . . . never let me go." When the Mountains Tremble became central to her life again 30 years later when a Spanish lawyer investigating the Ríos Montt regime asked for her help. She believed her first film and its outtakes just might contain evidence to bring charges of genocide under international law.
Reveals a Documentary Film Colliding with History in a Quest for Justice. In a startling loop of time and memory, Granito shows how a Filmmaker's first documentary has been instrumental to indict Guatemalan ex-dictator Ríos Montt.
"Granito... doesn't simply relate history; it is also part of history."
—Stephen Holden, The New York Times
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. Back in 1982, a young first-time filmmaker, Pamela Yates, had used her seeming naiveté to gain unprecedented access to Ríos Montt, his generals and leftist guerrillas waging a clandestine war deep in the mountains. The resulting film, When the Mountains Tremble (1983) revealed that the Guatemalan army was killing Mayan civilians. As Yates notes in her extraordinary follow-up, Granito: How to Nail a Dictator, "Guatemala . . . never let me go." When the Mountains Tremble became central to her life again 30 years later when a Spanish lawyer investigating the Ríos Montt regime asked for her help. She believed her first film and its outtakes just might contain evidence to bring charges of genocide under international law.
Peter Kinoy, Pamela Yates and Paco de Onís, the filmmaking team who made The Reckoning: The Battle for the International Criminal Court and State of Fear now present GRANITO: How to Nail a Dictator. Granito spans 30 years and portrays seven protagonists in Guatemala, Spain and the United States as they attempt to bring justice to violence-plagued Guatemala. Among the twists of fate:
• A 22-year-old Mayan woman, Rigoberta Menchú, the storyteller in When the Mountains Tremble, goes on to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 and then initiates the court case againstGeneral Ríos Montt that eventually leads to the use of Yates' footage as evidence.
• A guerrilla commander, Gustavo Meoño, who authorized Yates' filming with the insurgents in 1982, becomes a key player in uncovering the mechanisms of disappearances and state terror.
• Naomi Roht-Arriaza, the young press liaison in Guatemala who helped arrange Yates' filming with the guerrillas in 1982, becomes one of the key international lawyers working on the genocide case.
• Fredy Peccerelli, the head of the Guatemalan forensic anthropology team assigned to unearth evidence of the vast killings, repeatedly viewed
When the Mountains Tremble while growing up.
Granito is about the remarkable impact of a film on a nation’s fight for justice, dramatically entered as evidence to bring a dictator to justice and give Maya Ixil people their day in court. It is an inside, as-it-happens account of the way a new generation of human rights activists operates in a globalized, media-saturated world. Granito shows how multiple efforts --the work of the lawyers, the testimony of survivors, a documentary film, the willingness of a Spanish judge to assert international jurisdiction-- becomes a tiny grain of sand, adding up to tip the scales of justice.
• A 22-year-old Mayan woman, Rigoberta Menchú, the storyteller in When the Mountains Tremble, goes on to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 and then initiates the court case againstGeneral Ríos Montt that eventually leads to the use of Yates' footage as evidence.
• A guerrilla commander, Gustavo Meoño, who authorized Yates' filming with the insurgents in 1982, becomes a key player in uncovering the mechanisms of disappearances and state terror.
• Naomi Roht-Arriaza, the young press liaison in Guatemala who helped arrange Yates' filming with the guerrillas in 1982, becomes one of the key international lawyers working on the genocide case.
• Fredy Peccerelli, the head of the Guatemalan forensic anthropology team assigned to unearth evidence of the vast killings, repeatedly viewed
When the Mountains Tremble while growing up.
Granito is about the remarkable impact of a film on a nation’s fight for justice, dramatically entered as evidence to bring a dictator to justice and give Maya Ixil people their day in court. It is an inside, as-it-happens account of the way a new generation of human rights activists operates in a globalized, media-saturated world. Granito shows how multiple efforts --the work of the lawyers, the testimony of survivors, a documentary film, the willingness of a Spanish judge to assert international jurisdiction-- becomes a tiny grain of sand, adding up to tip the scales of justice.
Even after Ríos Montt was deposed and a tenuous democracy restored in Guatemala in 1986, he and the generals continued to enjoy wealth, status and freedom to participate in politics. In 1999, a U.N.-sponsored truth commission concluded that genocide had been committed by the government, and
that same year President Clinton declared that U.S. support for military forces and intelligence units that engaged in violence and repression was wrong. Even the Guatemalan generals, who claimed that overzealous field commanders were to blame, admitted that crimes had occurred.
The story might have ended there, had it not been for catalysts demanding change: the growing movement to assert international jurisdiction in cases of human rights abuses, the persistence of activists . . . and the persistence of memory in film. In Yates' When the Mountains Tremble and its outtakes from 1982, Ríos Montt repeatedly guarantees that atrocities could not be taking place because he is in total command. Yet Yates' recorded footage of a military-conducted tour, meant to show a legal war against guerrillas, appears to show the result of a mass murder of unarmed civilians.
Fast-forward to recent years, when lawyers and plaintiffs were seeking an international indictment in Spain, whose national court has led the way in such cases. This is done only when local courts fail to act, and no one expected much from the Guatemalan judicial system. And then in January, 2012 --one year after Granito's premiere at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival--Ríos Montt was indicted in Guatemala for genocide, in what can only be described as a stunning precedent for that country.
Granito is a complex, generational story of crime and punishment and also a historical thriller whose last chapter is yet to be written. Like its prequel,
When the Mountains Tremble, Granito could very likely become a part of the historic memory of Guatemala.
Photo Captions/Credits:
Top: Middle: Military occupation of the Guatemalan highlands, 1982. The 1998 Truth Commission concluded that the Guatemalan Army committed genocide against the Mayan population. (Jean-Marie Simon)
Pamela Yates filming on “When the Mountains Tremble” in the Guatemalan highlands, 1982. (Newton Thomas Sigel and www.skylight.is)
Bottom: The Caba family in front of their home in Ixil highlands of Guatemala. The army massacred 95 people in their village in 1982 during the genocide. (Dana Lixenberg)
that same year President Clinton declared that U.S. support for military forces and intelligence units that engaged in violence and repression was wrong. Even the Guatemalan generals, who claimed that overzealous field commanders were to blame, admitted that crimes had occurred.
The story might have ended there, had it not been for catalysts demanding change: the growing movement to assert international jurisdiction in cases of human rights abuses, the persistence of activists . . . and the persistence of memory in film. In Yates' When the Mountains Tremble and its outtakes from 1982, Ríos Montt repeatedly guarantees that atrocities could not be taking place because he is in total command. Yet Yates' recorded footage of a military-conducted tour, meant to show a legal war against guerrillas, appears to show the result of a mass murder of unarmed civilians.
Fast-forward to recent years, when lawyers and plaintiffs were seeking an international indictment in Spain, whose national court has led the way in such cases. This is done only when local courts fail to act, and no one expected much from the Guatemalan judicial system. And then in January, 2012 --one year after Granito's premiere at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival--Ríos Montt was indicted in Guatemala for genocide, in what can only be described as a stunning precedent for that country.
Granito is a complex, generational story of crime and punishment and also a historical thriller whose last chapter is yet to be written. Like its prequel,
When the Mountains Tremble, Granito could very likely become a part of the historic memory of Guatemala.
Photo Captions/Credits:
Top: Middle: Military occupation of the Guatemalan highlands, 1982. The 1998 Truth Commission concluded that the Guatemalan Army committed genocide against the Mayan population. (Jean-Marie Simon)
Pamela Yates filming on “When the Mountains Tremble” in the Guatemalan highlands, 1982. (Newton Thomas Sigel and www.skylight.is)
Bottom: The Caba family in front of their home in Ixil highlands of Guatemala. The army massacred 95 people in their village in 1982 during the genocide. (Dana Lixenberg)
Filmmakers
Pamela Yates, Director
Pamela Yates was born and raised in the Appalachian coal-mining region of Pennsylvania but ran away at the age of 16 to live in New York City. Yates is a co-founder of Skylight Pictures, a company dedicated to creating films and digital media tools that advance awareness of human rights and the quest for justice by implementing multi-year outreach campaigns designed to engage, educate and activate social change.
Yates’ films have spanned the globe geographically, covering a wide spectrum of human experience. She directed When the Mountains Tremble (the prequel to Granito) about a revolutionary moment in Guatemala, that won the Special Jury Prize at the first Sundance Film Festival. She also directed a trilogy of films Living Broke in Boom Times, an inside look at homeless activists’ movement to end poverty.
She is currently working on a quartet of films about transitional justice. The first, State of Fear based on the findings of the Peruvian Truth Commission, has been translated into 47 languages and broadcast in 154 countries. The Reckoning: The Battle for the International Criminal Court is an international thriller about the possibilities and pitfalls facing humanity’s quest for world justice; Granito the third film, revisits the subjects of her previous 1982 film When the Mountains Tremble after the film and all of its outtakes become forensic evidence in an international war crimes case. Part detective story, part memoir, Granito transports audiences through a riveting, haunting tale of genocide and justice spanning four decades. Yates is also developing a sister transmedia project, Granito: Every Memory Matters.
She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in support of her current film, Granito.
Yates is also the Executive Producer of the Academy Award winning Witness to War, the Producer of the Emmy Award winning Loss of Innocence, and the Overseas Press Club Award recipient for State of Fear.
Yates’ films have spanned the globe geographically, covering a wide spectrum of human experience. She directed When the Mountains Tremble (the prequel to Granito) about a revolutionary moment in Guatemala, that won the Special Jury Prize at the first Sundance Film Festival. She also directed a trilogy of films Living Broke in Boom Times, an inside look at homeless activists’ movement to end poverty.
She is currently working on a quartet of films about transitional justice. The first, State of Fear based on the findings of the Peruvian Truth Commission, has been translated into 47 languages and broadcast in 154 countries. The Reckoning: The Battle for the International Criminal Court is an international thriller about the possibilities and pitfalls facing humanity’s quest for world justice; Granito the third film, revisits the subjects of her previous 1982 film When the Mountains Tremble after the film and all of its outtakes become forensic evidence in an international war crimes case. Part detective story, part memoir, Granito transports audiences through a riveting, haunting tale of genocide and justice spanning four decades. Yates is also developing a sister transmedia project, Granito: Every Memory Matters.
She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in support of her current film, Granito.
Yates is also the Executive Producer of the Academy Award winning Witness to War, the Producer of the Emmy Award winning Loss of Innocence, and the Overseas Press Club Award recipient for State of Fear.
Paco de Onis, Producer
Paco de Onís grew up in several Latin American countries and is multi-lingual. He has just released Granito (world premiere at Sundance 2011), a documentary detective story focused on the role of filmic and archival documentation in the prosecution of a genocide case against Guatemalan generals, and launching Granito: Every Memory Matters, a companion transmedia project.
He recently produced The Reckoning: The Battle for the International Criminal Court (world premiere Sundance 2009), accompanied by IJCentral, an interactive audience engagement initiative promoting global rule of law, developed at the BAVC Producer’s Institute in 2008. Prior to that, he produced State of Fear, a Skylight Pictures film about Peru’s 20-year “war on terror”
based on the findings of the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Paco is a partner at Skylight Pictures, and previously produced documentaries for PBS ("On Our Own Terms” with Bill Moyers), National Geographic ("Secrets from the Grave"), and a range of other programs. Before
producing television documentaries, he created music festivals in South America & the Caribbean, renovated and operated an arts/performance theater in Miami Beach, (The Cameo Theater) and owned and operated a Spanish-style tapas tavern in a 500-year old colonial house in Cartagena, Colombia.
He recently produced The Reckoning: The Battle for the International Criminal Court (world premiere Sundance 2009), accompanied by IJCentral, an interactive audience engagement initiative promoting global rule of law, developed at the BAVC Producer’s Institute in 2008. Prior to that, he produced State of Fear, a Skylight Pictures film about Peru’s 20-year “war on terror”
based on the findings of the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Paco is a partner at Skylight Pictures, and previously produced documentaries for PBS ("On Our Own Terms” with Bill Moyers), National Geographic ("Secrets from the Grave"), and a range of other programs. Before
producing television documentaries, he created music festivals in South America & the Caribbean, renovated and operated an arts/performance theater in Miami Beach, (The Cameo Theater) and owned and operated a Spanish-style tapas tavern in a 500-year old colonial house in Cartagena, Colombia.
| Granito Press Kit -- Complete |
| Granito Press Kit -- Spanish |
