FEEL IT.STREAM
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Mikael Wahlforss

Production

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Stalag is an abbreviated term from the German “Stammlager”, which referred to a field of military prisoners of war during World War II. In Guatemala, almost forty years later, the term Stalag acquires a new dimension. The model villages were spaces in the Guatemalan rural areas where they forced thousands of civilians, previously terrorized by government brutality led by Ríos Montt. Likewise, the Civil Self-Defense Patrols (PAC), a paramilitary apparatus still in force in Guatemala, marked the last detachment in the damaged social fabric of Guatemala. As in Headline Today: Guatemala and in Armored Daydreams, Mikael Wahlforss presents us in Stalag Guatemala the testimonies of victims and perpetrators without makeup and without distortion of the facts. The anecdotes of one and the other flow across the screen transporting the viewer to that Guatemala in which men, women and children are indifferently victims and witnesses of state repression.

Armoured Daydreams

1983Movie
Headline Today: Guatemala
6.0

Headline Today: Guatemala is a war documentary. Two American journalists: Allan Nairn and Jean-Marie Simon explore the internal armed conflict in Guatemala in 1982. After General Efraín Ríos Montt comes to power the few news about Guatemala that appear in the United States' media are apparently positive. The major American media advertises the image of Ríos Montt as a “born again Christian” with a mission to pacify Guatemala. Nothing is further from reality. The Reagan Republican administration hides from Americans the war aid that his administration continues to provide to the Guatemalan army, despite the explicit congressional ban. The international media remains silent about the dimensions of the war in Guatemala while Ríos Montt, with the approval of the local oligarchy, leads for 18 months the largest number of atrocities and human rights violations against the civilian population.

Headline Today: Guatemala

1983Movie