Mayan Renaissance | |
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Directed by | Dawn Engle |
Written by | Dawn Engle |
Produced by | PeaceJam |
Starring | Rigoberta Menchú Adolfo Pérez Esquivel Rosalina Tuyuc Jody Williams |
Release date |
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Running time | 68 minutes |
Countries |
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Languages | English and Spanish, with subtitles |
Mayan Renaissance is a 2012 American documentary film by director Dawn Engle about the Maya peoples of Guatemala and Central America. It describes the ancient Maya civilization, the conquest by Spain during the 1520s, hundreds of years of oppression, and the modern struggle by Mayans for self-determination and a Mayan renaissance.
Its première screening at the United Nations Headquarters was on 16 May 2012 [1] and its broadcast première on Colorado Public Television was on 6 June 2012. [2] [3]
The film contains interviews of 1992 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Rigoberta Menchú, a Mayan indigenous rights activist and politician, and other Guatemalan and foreign contributors. It was awarded the Best Colorado Filmmaker Documentary Award at The Film Festival of Colorado in July 2012. The documentary is the first of a planned ten-part Nobel Legacy Film Series. [4]
Rigoberta Menchú Tum is a K'iche' Guatemalan human rights activist, feminist, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Menchú has dedicated her life to publicizing the rights of Guatemala's Indigenous peoples during and after the Guatemalan Civil War (1960–1996), and to promoting Indigenous rights internationally.
Kʼicheʼ are Indigenous peoples of the Americas and are one of the Maya peoples. The eponymous Kʼicheʼ language is a Mesoamerican language in the Mayan language family. The highland Kʼicheʼ states in the pre-Columbian era are associated with the ancient Maya civilization, and reached the peak of their power and influence during the Mayan Postclassic period.
The Maya are an ethnolinguistic group of indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica. The ancient Maya civilization was formed by members of this group, and today's Maya are generally descended from people who lived within that historical region. Today they inhabit southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and westernmost El Salvador and Honduras.
Guatemalans are people connected to the country of Guatemala. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Guatemalans, several of these connections exist.
David Matthew Stoll is an American cultural anthropologist. His research has focused on the indigenous peoples of modern Latin America, and especially on the Mayas in Guatemala. He has been a professor of anthropology at Middlebury College since 1997.
San Pedro Jocopilas is a municipality in the Guatemalan department of El Quiché.
Uspantán is a municipality in the Guatemalan department of El Quiché. It is one of the largest municipalities of El Quiché and stretches from the mountainous highlands in the South to the tropical lowlands in the North. The municipal seat is in Villa de San Miguel Uspantán with a population of 2,800. The birthplace of Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchú, a community named Laj Chimel, is located Uspantán not far from the municipal seat. Completion of paving on the road in from Chichicastenango has brought a small tourist boom to the town.
The Man of Peace is an award conceptualized in 1999 by the annual World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates in Rome. The purpose of the award is to recognize individuals who "from personalities from the world of culture and entertainment who have stood up for human rights and for the spread of the principles of Peace and Solidarity in the world, made an outstanding contribution to international social justice and peace".
The Guerrilla Army Of The Poor was a Guatemalan leftist guerrilla movement, which commanded significant support among indigenous Maya people during the Guatemalan Civil War.
General elections were held in Guatemala on 9 September to elect a new President and Vice President of the Republic, 158 congressional deputies, and 332 mayors. As no presidential candidate received a majority of the vote, a second round was held on 4 November.
Encuentro por Guatemala ("EG")– a Spanish name variously translated as "Encounter for Guatemala", or as "Together for Guatemala" (Reuters) – was a Guatemalan political party; encuentro may also translate as "gathering", "meeting", or "union".
Founded by Pamela Yates, Peter Kinoy and Paco de Onís in 1981, Skylight is a media organization based in Brooklyn, NY that has been making feature-length documentaries and short digital projects for over 30 years. Skylight is a member of New Day Films.
When The Mountains Tremble is a 1983 documentary film produced by Skylight Pictures about the war between the Guatemalan Military and the Mayan Indigenous population of Guatemala.
Laj Chimel or Chimel is a community located in the cloud forest of the municipality of San Miguel Uspantán, Department of El Quiché, Guatemala. It is the birthplace of the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchú Tum. Currently it is only accessible by foot or by four-wheel drive vehicles, as the road through the mountains is unpaved. It is located a short distance north of the municipal capital San Miguel Uspantán, about 45 minutes to an hour in vehicle. The community consists of about 17 families, including some who returned to the area after being displaced during the Guatemalan Civil War.
Dawn Engle is the co-founder and former executive director of the non-profit PeaceJam Foundation.
Centro Educativo Pavarotti is a junior high school for children aged 12–16 located near Lake Atitlán in San Lucas Tolimán, Sololá Departement, Guatemala. The center is an initiative of the Rigoberta Menchú Foundation, which is an institution accredited for its contributions to the defense of human rights especially of indigenous peoples which impels educational programs, citizen participation, community development and combating impunity. The Utzilal Tijonikel program, which translated from Kaqchikel into English means “teaching to do the good thing”, offers also education complemented by a basic work orientation. The center serves approximately 150 Guatemalan children with 10 professors educating them. The majority of children attending this school live in poor circumstances, so that they receive financial support in order to attend this school. Without these benefits they would probably work on fields, like many of their parents do.
Guatemala–Spain relations are the current and historical relations between Guatemala and Spain. Both nations are members of the Organization of Ibero-American States and the United Nations.
Menchu's little yellow bat is a species of vesper bat found in Central America. It was described as a new species in 2012.
PeaceJam is a US-based global youth organization led by Nobel Peace laureates. It was founded by musical artist Ivan Suvanjieff and his wife, the economist Dawn Engle in 1993.