Welcome to La Peña! Promoting social justice & intercultural understanding through the arts since 1975.
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15th Annual Fist Up Film Festival —Helena de Sarayaku
October 12 @ 7:30 pm - 10:00 pm
$15 – $25
Get ready to be moved, inspired and engaged! Join us for the 15th Annual Fist Up Film Festival for a world of thought-provoking cinema, carefully curated.
We’re thrilled to announce our collaboration with Fist Up Film Festival for October 2024! Presenting contemporary films that leave a lasting impact, inspire meaningful discussions, promote awareness, and encourage empathy.
This film festival uniquely bridges the gap between global and local communities, weaving together shared experiences from diverse backgrounds. These curated films amplify the voices of historically marginalized communities, honoring their stories and lived experiences. We invite you to be a part of this meaningful evening through our screenings and engaging Q&A sessions!
Admission is donation-based, with a suggested $15 contribution. Join us in celebrating the power of film and storytelling! You can also sign up to volunteer and come for free!
THIRD NIGHT: Helena de Sarayaku w/ Q&A from filmmaker + Report back from the Amazon
Helena from Sarayaku traces the Sarayaku Kichwa people’s struggle to protect their lives, cultures and their territories from oil extraction in the period 2002 to 2021. It is both an anthropological study conducted by indigenous people for indigenous people, and for the world, and a vehicle to demonstrate the contribution of indigenous peoples to protecting the planet.
Helena’s elders encourage her in her quest to convey the indigenous message to the urban citizens of the world that their lives have to change for the protection of all of us. “Take these voices to other countries so they will listen, speak this message in their language when you get there.”
“We defend our territory so the great destroyers of the Earth do not come,” explains one of the elders. Thanks to the struggle of the Sarayaku, “everything that our elders left us is intact,” but “others lost their cultures, and they will never get them back…[the companies] will build the road, the rainforest will be destroyed. They will contaminate the rivers. The world is coming to an end as our ancestors predicted… they destroy it without being aware of it. We cannot go on like this.”
