52 minutes / Color
English subtitles
Release: 2011
Copyright: 2011
After 30 years of war, a difficult peace, migration, economic, social and cultural upheaval, for her new film Olivia Carrescia returns to Todos Santos, to examine the changes that have taken place. The Todos Santeros now have cell phones, TV's and large cinderblock houses, but are they better off?
The civil strife of the 1980's ended in the official Peace Accord of 1996, but left many of the conflict's underlying social and economic problems unresolved. An increasing number of Todos Santos, rather than traveling as they had done for generations to the coastal cotton plantations, began traveling back and forth to the U.S.-legally or illegally. They sent back cash remittances that those who were left behind used for household necessities, and later for clothes, electronics and other items. Before long, homes similar to those the migrants saw in the United States and in the luxury resorts of Cancun, Mexico, began springing up in this traditional Mayan village. As a result, Todos Santos grew and prospered, becoming a commercial hub in the northwestern mountains of Guatemala.
But the prosperity was not to last. Long term migration and the economic crisis of 2008 in the U.S. has had severe repercussions in this once small mountain village.
In A BETTER LIFE (Una Vida Mejor) we meet again Santiaga, the weaver and resourceful homemaker, Benito, the former school teacher, and Desiderio, the wise environmentalist-all familiar to those who have seen the Todos Santos trilogy of films. Along with returning migrants and newly introduced villagers, young and old, the impact of profound change and altered expectations is explored with the sensitivity, awareness and insight that have characterized this documentary series.
"Olivia Carrescia completes a trilogy of films about life in the Mam community of Todos Santos Cuchumatan by furnishing a series of vignettes, poignant and incisive, that document a giddying process of socio-economic as well as cultural change, one that has transformed a hitherto remote corner of highland Guatemala into a globalized hub. Her thirty-year perspective offers us a teeming microcosm of how traditional values are challenged, reconfigured, and often obliterated, yet Todos Santos endures."—W. George Lovell, Queen's University, Canada (Professor of Geography)
"Based on Carrescia's thirty years of contact with Todos Santos Mam, this is a hopeful rather than despairing look at how the Mayas are struggling to improve their lives - some of them with great success."—David Stoll, a Professor of Anthropology at Middlebury College
"For over thirty years, prize-winning filmmaker Olivia Carrescia has carefully documented the lives of Todosanteros, developing long-term relationships that are evident in her newest film. Una Vida Mejor is a sensitive portrayal of what intensifying transnational migration has produced in Todos Santos over the course of the past decade. It is a compelling and much-anticipated update that won't disappoint."—Dr. Jennifer Burrell, Department of Anthropology, University at Albany SUNY
Now on one DVD, Olivia Carrescia's three films on the Mayan Indians of Guatemala preserve a record, and provide an acute observation on how the indigenous culture has been affected by, yet survived, that country's tumultuous history.
Olivia Carrescia | 2008 | 155 minutes | Color | English subtitles
The Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation exhumes up to 1,000 bodies a year to identify them, and return the remains to their families.
Olivia Carrescia | 2009 | 22 minutes | Color
Demonstrates how the political turmoil of the 1980s affected this once quiet Guatemalan village.
Olivia Carrescia | 1989 | 58 minutes | Color
