Directors: Katie Galloway, Kelly Duane de la Vega Producers: Katie Galloway, Kelly Duane de la Vega, Nefertiti Kelley Farias
Description: El
Poeta tells the story of renowned Mexican poet Javier Sicilia,
who ignited mass protests and an ongoing international movement after
the brutal killing of his 24-year-old son Juan Francisco—collateral
damage in a drug war that has left more than 100,000 dead or missing
since 2006. After his son’s death, Sicilia called on the Mexican
people to protest, bringing more than 100,000 people to the capital
demanding that the government address the devastating impact of the
militarized drug war. The movement launched caravans throughout
Mexico and then crossed the border to the US, urging American
citizens and lawmakers to acknowledge that America’s appetite for
drugs (the US makes up ninety percent of the market for Mexican
drugs) and loose gun laws have fueled the ongoing war.
Biography: Katie
Galloway is a filmmaker whose films explore the intersections of
institutional power, civil and human rights, and political activism. Better This World tells the story of a young man charged with
domestic terrorism and his relationship with a radical mentor and
undercover FBI informant.The film won the WGA’s Best Documentary
Screenplay Award, Best Documentary at the Gotham Independent Film
Awards and an IDA Creative Recognition Award. Katie produced an
award-winning films on criminal justice system for PBS Frontline: Snitch, Requiem For Frank Lee Smith and The Case for
Innocence. A two-time Sundance Fellow and HBO/Film Independent
Documentary Fellow, Galloway taught documentary production at the
Columbia University and now teaches in media studies at UC Berkeley.
Kelly
Duane de la Vega‘s films have screened at hundreds of film
festivals and broadcast on POV/PBS and the Documentary Channel. She
received the Writer’s Guild of America’s Best Documentary
Screenplay Award, Gotham Independent Film’s Best Documentary Award
and multiple Emmy nominations. A recent Sundance, HBO and Film
Independent Fellow, Kelly’s film Better This World won Best
Documentary Feature at San Francisco and Sarasota Film Festivals,
received an IDA Creative Achievement award and was selected to screen
at NY MoMA’s documentary fortnight. Kelly teaches the course
Documentary Forms at UC Berkeley.
Nefertiti
Kelley Farias is a Mexican-American filmmaker whose primary focus
is social struggles and indigenous cultures in Latin America. Her
film Bitter Memories about the Guatemalan exhumations of the
1980s massacres and survivors was distributed by LAVA, and has been
used in universities to study the peace process in Guatemala.
