Pamela Yates and Paco de Onís give an in-depth masterclass on their film tracking the trial against Guatemalan ex-dictator Efraín Ríos Montt.
“Sometimes a film makes history; it doesn’t just document it.”
When Pamela Yates made her first documentary, When the Mountains Tremble (1982), she could not have imagined that 30 years later it would be used as forensic evidence in the trial against Guatemalan ex-dictator Efraín Ríos Montt.
In a startling loop of time and memory, Granito: How to Nail a Dictator (2011) shows how a filmmaker’s first documentary was instrumental in indicting Ríos Montt. 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 the quest to bring a malevolent dictator to justice.
We are delighted to welcome Pamela Yates and Paco de Onís to London for a one-off event – a screening of Granito: How to Nail a Dictator, which brings together the past and the present, and short documentary The Verdict, which captures the trial and sentencing of Ríos Montt. This will be followed by an in-depth conversation about their work and out-reach activity, including clips from their latest film Disruption, which premieres at Movies that Matter festival in March.
We were delighted to welcome Pamela Yates and Paco de Onís to London for a one-off event – a screening of Granito: How to Nail a Dictator, and short documentary The Verdict, which captures the trial and sentencing of Ríos Montt. This was followed by an in-depth conversation about their work and out-reach activity, including clips from their latest film Disruption, which premiered at Movies that Matter festival in March 2014.
Pamela 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. Four of Yates’ films as a Director – When the Mountains Tremble; Poverty Outlaw; Takeover and The Reckoning: The Battle for the International Criminal Court — have been nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, and When the Mountains Tremble won the Special Jury Award in 1984. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in support of Granito.
Paco de Onís is a partner at Skylight Pictures, producing documentary films with long-term outreach campaigns using advanced media technologies to strengthen human rights and promote social justice. He produced The Reckoning: The Battle for the International Criminal Court (world premiere Sundance 2009), accompanied by JCentral, an interactive audience engagement initiative promoting global rule of law. Prior to that, he produced State of Fear: The Truth About Terrorism, a Skylight Pictures film about Peru’s 20-year “war on terror” based on the findings of the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
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