Film 1: La Gaceta: 100 years and 3 Generations Behind America’s Only Trilingual Newspaper United States, Florida, Local Director: Lynn Marvin Dingfelder 1:00:00
For the past 100 years Tampa has been a melting pot of latin cultures and La Gaceta has preserved and chronicled all of it. As newspapers nationally struggle to survive... La Gaceta successfully celebrates a century of news, political drama, threats, Hoover’s FBI, communist witch-hunts, along with a wonderful collection of stories and vintage photographs depicting everyday life over the past century. This newspaper has been a mainstay for generations and survives as a result of a local family’s perseverance and dedication to community. Our La Gaceta documentary tells the Manteiga family’s extraordinary story... their fears, struggle and century of success. La Gaceta is the only trilingual newspaper in the United States. This documentary honors that by also being trilingual.
Film 2: Good Things Will Come / No Hay Mal Que Por Bien No Venga United States, Florida, Local Director: Janelle Bosek 39:58
Faced with immigrating to the US from Cuba alone as children – via a secret program called Operation Pedro Pan that received over 14,000 children between 1960 and 1962 – this short documentary follows two former “Pedro Paners” who agreed to share their insights and contemplations on the impact this event had on their lives and what we all have to learn from it today. Through their memories, they re-witness the slow decay of their idyllic life in Cuba and recall the haunting rise of Fidel Castro’s dictatorship in the early 60s, which causes them to flee through the secret airlifts coordinated by the Catholic Church, the US State Department and people on the ground in Cuba. Having both dedicated their careers in service to their adopted homeland and reaching the highest echelons of the CIA and City Government, our contributors’ parallel stories intertwine throughout the film. They intimately share their gratitude for the incomprehensible sacrifice of their parents who made this unthinkable decision to separate from their children in the hopes of giving them a better life and reflect on what they gained from this selfless act; ultimately realizing the truth of the Cuban saying that even from the worst of things, good things will come: “No hay mal que por bien no venga.” The director’s mother was also a Pedro Pan child and is the inspiration for the film. Ric Prado is a New York Times bestselling author of the book "Black Ops: The Life of a CIA Shadow Warrior" released in March 2022. Guillermo Vidal was the 44th Mayor of the City of Denver and the author of the book "Boxing for Cuba" published in 2007.
