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Press Release
For Immediate Release  How do you communicate hope in the midst of despair? How do you bring light to victims of political and cultural oppression? And how can art be a voice for the future? These are the questions that filmmaker Penelope Price asked in her one hour documentary Artist of Resistance . Price traveled to El Salvador to witness the exhumation of mass graves and document them. There she met artist Claudia Bernardi who was also struggling to come to terms with these questions. The film takes us into the tiny village of El Mozote where the artist, Claudia Bernardi, joins her sister who is part of the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team. The team is trying to discover the truth: are the mass graves a result of a massacre or a battle between two armies? Not many of us would have the fortitude to witness the bodies of 131 dead children. But to filmmaker Penelope Price, there was no choice: "When I learned of the story, that Rufina Amaya Marquez had witnessed the death of her husband and children and had the courage to remain alive to 'tell the world' and demand justice, I had to make her voice heard. The story transcends El Salvador. It is a parable of colonization, and she entrusted me with her story." Rufina Amaya Marquez, mother of four and the only survivor of the massacre, had insisted on justice until the United Nations Truth Commission finally ordered this investigation. The excavation begins. Slowly they uncover the bones of 131 children whose average age is 6 years old. Clearly these are not guerilla soldiers. The case is closed. But the El Salvadorian government provides amnesty for those responsible. Filled with rage, Claudia returns to Berkeley. She interprets this reality through a series of prints. She then returns to El Salvador armed with paints and brushes to paint murals with the children who had inherited this atrocity. Out of this experience emerges the role of the artist as activist. What are the redemptive qualities of art? Not only for the artist, but also for the village? Soldiers were ordered to erase lives, erase memory, but Claudia and her band of small muralists create. Claudia Bernardi's own art, which is animated in moving layers throughout the film, tells a story on levels that no written historical document can hope to achieve. Her work is stunning. It counters brutality through beauty and creates a powerful global statement against violence. The film itself as a medium offers an experience beyond the traditional documentary. It is both intimate and profound, taking us through layers of imagery and thought, making the process of watching the film an exploration. The documentary is the result of a four-year long project by Dr. Penelope Price, an Arizona filmmaker and college teacher for Scottsdale Community College, and Claudia Bernardi, an Argentinan-born artist and college teacher in Berkeley, California. Together, Price and Bernardi have traveled to El Salvador three times: first for the excavation of the mass grave; second for the painting of the murals; and third for the 20-year memorial of the massacre. As a result of their work in El Salvador, both Bernardi and Price have developed college courses that address art, activism, and community outreach. As Price explains: This experience has changed my life; it has clarified my path. In response to the effects of colonization, victimization and injustice world wide, I have developed a documentary class at Scottsdale Community College called "Lights, Camera, Activism: Documentaries for Social Change." Funding for Artist of Resistance was provided in part by Arizona Commission for The Arts. Price received the 2001 Visual Arts Fellowship from the Arizona Art Commission. All other members of the film production team are Arizona residents. They include Producer/Cinematographer Luis Bohorquez, Composer/Sound Designer Rudolfo Madero of Eureka Productions, and Co-editor and Graphic Artist Jeff Stanley of diMo Digital Motion. The documentary was shot on 16 mm film, on location in El Salvador and in Tempe, Arizona at the Segura Publishing Co. The final on-line edit was done at Blade Editorial in downtown Phoenix, Arizona. |
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