RIGOBERTA PORTRAIT

a happy ending; but it was not to be. When I went back to Guatemala to figure out the rest of the story, I thought that people would be sad and upset but I actually found many who had never given up on justice, who were finding creative new ways, including opening domestic cases against the very same people who were indicted in Spain, so I thought this is a much better and broader film. Hopefully the film itself will be a granito.

Looking back at that footage of yourself as a very young filmmaker, is there any advice you’d give your younger self?
Be more fearless and do better interviews. Because the interviews and what people said to me back then are at the crux of the evidence in the genocide case. And this is precedent-setting evidence: first time in the Spanish National Court that they’ve used video, visual evidence in a genocide case. So I wish that I had done more cogent and better interviews, but I guess in life we all have to start somewhere.

Did you study film in school?
I was a high school dropout but I loved photography, so I took it up and started to work for newspapers as a photojournalist. I did go to college when I was 21; studied film and television production and political science at the University of Massachusetts. Then I came to New York.

When did you form Skylight Pictures?
In 1981. We did a short film before When the Mountains Tremble called Resurgence, about the return of the Klu Klux Klan in the American South.