Producer Camera Writer Editor

I have good memories of my trip to Peten, Guatemala and making of this film. Back in 1984, I travelled to Guatemala to produce a documentary about “peaceful living in the place in a time o war.” In the 1980s Guatemala was in the news because of its deeply conflicted state, but I was not deterred. I wanted to go there because I believed that war is (partially) a state of mind and the homesteaders that I imagined would be hard a work in their daily lives without the same worries that were being described in the news. I did that film while I was in the middle of Missouri Fiddle project version 1`. I wanted to go somewhere over winter vacation while I was a grad student at UCLA---going to a place with no electricity or roads. I was interested in frontier homesteaders so the Peten emerged as the right place. I was a student at UCLA film school at the time. They would not give me a camera package at that time to take to Guatemala (they thought it to be so unsafe for the gear!). So I used some of my student financial aid loan money to buy a great Canon Scoopic 16mm film camera that I still own and other gear and wandered by myself to southern pastures. I was able to find a guide to take me up the Rio de la Pasion to an area where I could find homesteaders and raw jungles. We took a canoe up the river after a long overland trip. He knew a family beyond Sayaxche a little river village along the river. We stayed at the frontier-like home of a great family of corn farmers-homesteaders living on the riverbanks of a river tributary for about one week--until my batteries ran out. That is the family in the film. I wanted to make a film entirely by myself relying on the film and audio equipment self-sufficiently and without any backup. I was on my own in the middle of Peten, working alone with the cooperation of the local folks. Before we went up the river. I had to charge my batteries in Sayaxche which was a few hours by canoe down the river and had electricity from something like 6am - 10 am daily. Got the batteries charged before I went upriver and hoped for the best. I took one hour of 16mm color film negative and shot/edited the 20 minute project with a 3x1 shooting-edit ratio which is pretty good. I am grateful to my UCLA professors--Prof John Boehm (RIP) and Prof Richard Hawkins (RIP) for their support to me for this project. I love this film because I have so many memories experiences wrapped up in this project. Thanks for watching it.