Peralta Gems

November 2024 Peralta TV Highlights

Written by Johnathan Freeman | Oct 31, 2024 4:09:40 PM

Peralta TV can be seen on
Channel 27: Alameda, Berkeley
Channel 28: Emeryville, Piedmont, Oakland
AT&T U-Verse Channel 99

 

MUNDO MAYA
11/05 (Tue) @ 6pm
11/17 (Sun) @ 7pm
11/29 (Fri) @ 2:30pm

Produced and Directed by Steve Hamm
Elm City Films
MUNDO MAYA is the story of the present-day Maya people of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula--their society, culture, and dreams for the future. We show Maya in their villages as they contemplate the changes that may come as a result of the Tren Maya, a luxury tourist train that the Mexican government is building to bring tourists and their dollars to the interior. Then we travel to the San Francisco Bay Area, where tens of thousands of Yucatec Maya have migrated in search of economic opportunities. There is suffering—but also hope—in both places. More broadly, the film guides the viewer to appreciate and respect indigenous people everywhere.

 

 

BEYOND BEING SILENCED: GYAA ISDLAA
11/10 (Sun) @ 7:30pm
11/19 (Tue) @ 6pm
11/28 (Thur) @ 2pm

Produced and Directed by Charles Wilkinson, Tina Schleissler
World-famous Haida artist Robert Davidson was born in Hydaburg, Alaska at a time when the traditional law-giving social ceremony of the North Coast Native culture, the potlatch, had been outlawed by governments anxious to prevent Indigenous inhabitants from asserting title to their ancestral lands. Years later, the ban was lifted, but irrevocable damage had been done to younger generations of Haida and their connection to their heritage. Then, in 1969, a young Davidson carved a totem pole for the village of Masset in Haida Gwaii, British Columbia, sparking a rebirth of coastal Indigenous culture.

Fifty years later, Davidson became aware that a number of the clans from his birth home in Alaska had lost their tribal crests: totems which are a fundamental part of a clan's identity. He decided to re-create these crests with other Indigenous artists in the form of giant wall hangings and gift them to his brother clans at a special potlatch celebration organized by Davidson and his family.
In BEYOND BEING SILENCED: GYAA ISDLAA, filmmaker Charles Wilkinson gives viewers an immersive look at that potlatch, a jubilant gathering that finds the members of many Haida clans celebrating the revitalization of their cultural traditions and affirming the clans' social cohesion and responsibilities as caretakers of the land.

 

OUR STORY - THE INDIGENOUS LED FIGHT TO PROTECT GREATER CHACO
11/11 (Mon) @ 8pm        
11/15 (Fri) @1pm        
11/23 (Sat) @ 8:30pm        

A film by Daniel Tso and Michael Ramsey
Over 90 percent of the available lands in the Greater Chaco region of the Southwest have already been leased for oil and gas extraction. OUR STORY documents the ongoing Indigenous-led work to protect the remaining lands that are untouched by oil and gas, as well as the health and well-being of communities surrounded by these extractive industries.

Diné and Pueblo people directly impacted by oil and gas extraction in the Greater Chaco region have been organizing for generations. But rarely is this story of extraction and land defense told from their perspectives. Over the course of three years, Navajo and Pueblo grassroots leaders collaborated to tell their stories about the struggle to protect their living cultural traditions, the public health of their communities, the climate, and the integrity of this landscape (including the World Heritage Site Chaco National Historical Park) from fracking.

OUR STORY emerges from a long-standing collaboration between local Diné leaders in the Greater Chaco region, Pueblo organizers, and a small team of community-engaged media makers to share the story of the Indigenous-led fight to protect this sacred landscape.

 

FROM WOUNDED KNEE TO STANDING ROCK: A REPORTER'S JOURNEY     
11/13 (Wed) @ 7:30pm         
11/18 (Mon) @ 3pm         
11/30 (Sat) @ 8:30pm        

A film by Kevin McKiernan
In 1973, rookie NPR reporter Kevin McKiernan became the only journalist to defy an FBI-imposed media blackout and embed himself with the members of the American Indian Movement who had taken over the historic village of Wounded Knee, South Dakota. FROM WOUNDED KNEE TO STANDING ROCK tells the story of that 71-day armed occupation through the voices of both the AIM members and FBI agents who lived it and shows how this event continues to reverberate through Native American-US government relations, up through the movement at Standing Rock against the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Featuring cinematography from seminal director of photography Haskell Wexler, the film situates the past 50 years of US policy towards tribes within the greater history of broken treaties and the genocide of indigenous people throughout North America. Shining renewed light on such events as the inception of the American Indian Movement, the FBI's COINTELPRO program, and the arrest and continued incarceration of Leonard Peltier, FROM WOUNDED KNEE TO STANDING ROCK is a critical document of modern Native American history, told by those who made it happen.