LPB is excited to welcome the arrival of the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival. Now in its 15th year, LALIFF continues to be one of the most important Latino Film Festival in the nation. LALIFF will be returning to the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood from Sunday, July 17 through Monday, July 25, along with a selection of 76 films, including 42 feature films (29 narrative and 13 documentaries) and 34 short films from 14 different countries. Come out and celebrate this joyous event by checking out LPB’s featured presentations…
CAFÉ CON… SANDIE PEDLOW
Tuesday, July 19th, 6:00 pm (Filmaker’s Cafe)
On Tuesday night, we invite you to share a cup of coffee and get to know LPB’s newest executive director, Sandie Pedlow, as she commences to lead the way for Latino Public Broadcasting. LPB, funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, supports the development, production, acquisition and distribution of non-commercial educational and cultural content that is representative of the Latino community or address issues of importance to Latino Americans. For this event, please RSVP by Monday, July 18th, to Luis Gutierrez, LPB Program Coordinator, at: luis.gutierrez@lpbp.org.
LPB SHOWCASE
GRANITO: HOW TO NAIL A DICTATOR 
Producer: Paco de Onis
Director: Pamela Yates
Documentary/103 Minutes
Monday, July 18th, 7:00 pm (Arena Stage Theatre)
Purchase tickets HERE!
GRANITO: HOW TO NAIL A DICTATOR is a story of destinies joined by Guatemala’s past, and how a documentary film intertwined with a nation’s turbulent history emerges as an active player in the present. In GRANITO: HOW TO NAIL A DICTATOR our characters sift for clues buried in archives of mind and place and historical memory, seeking to uncover a narrative that could unlock the past and settle matters of life and death in the present. Each of the five main characters whose destinies collide in GRANITO: HOW TO NAIL A DICTATOR are connected by the Guatemala of 1982, then engulfed in a war where a genocidal “scorched earth” campaign by the military exterminated nearly 200,000 Maya people. Now, as if a watchful Maya god were weaving back together threads of a story unraveled by the passage of time, forgotten by most, our characters become integral to the overarching narrative of wrongs done and justice sought that they have pieced together, each adding their granito, their tiny grain of sand, to the epic tale.
GRANITO: HOW TO NAIL A DICTATOR is a co-production of Skylight Pictures, Inc. and ITVS, produced in association with LPB, with funding provided by CPB. For more information about the film, please visit the filmmaker’s website at: www.skylightpictures.com.
PRECIOUS KNOWLEDGE
Director: Ari Luis Palos
Producer: Eren Isabel McGinnis
Documentary/90 Minutes
Tuesday, July 19th, 7:10 pm (Arena Stage Theatre)
Purchase tickets HERE!
Precious Knowledge interweaves the transformative stories of students in the Mexican American Studies Program at Tucson High School. The program has become a model of educational success with 100% of their students graduating from high school and 82% attending college. We filmed their social justice throughout an entire school year to document disenfranchised youth becoming engaged, informed and active Chicanos. However, Arizona lawmakers believe the students are being indoctrinated with dangerous ideology and that the classes teach anti-American, anti-capitalist destructive ethnic chauvinism.
PARAISO FOR SALE 
Director: Anayansi Prado
Documentary/73 Minutes
Wednesday, July 20th, 9:10 pm (Spielberg Theatre)
Purchase tickets HERE!
What price would you pay for paradise? And who would you be willing to take it from? Panama is one of the most sought after real estate destinations in the world. The archipelago of Bocas del Toro, a gem hidden away in the Caribbean side of Panama, attracts retirees and developers from the US with its crystal clear waters and luscious trees.
Filmmaker, Anayansi Prado, returns to her homeland to document the effects the fast-growing migration of American retirees and developers to Bocas del Toro is having on the local community. PARAISO FOR SALE explores issues of modern day colonialism, residential tourism and global gentrification and reveals that migration between Latin America and the US is not just a one-way street.
EL VELADOR
Director: Natalia Almada
Documentary/72 Minutes
Thursday, July 21, 6:00 pm (Spielberg Theatre)
Purchase tickets HERE!
Director Natalia Almada follows Martin, the night watchman of one of the most ornate cemeteries in northern Mexico, where drug lords and corrupt cops are laid to rest. A documentary spawned from violence, EL VELADOR shows the end result of a chronic societal crisis. But Almada’s approach is poetic, not sociological, filled with striking surreal images of elaborate mausoleums that disrupt the pastoral landscape. As the cemetery, filled with widows tending to their husband’s shrines, constantly expands, the dreamlike quality of Almada’s filmmaking creates a disembodied atmosphere where the poor and living labor day and night for the rich deceased.
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