The Yucatec Maya Film Project began in 1976 when a team of North American ethnographic filmmakers lived and worked for a year in a small South Central Yucatec community. To date, four hour-long programs, “The Living Maya”, have been broadcast on PBS and distributed though Documentary Educational Resources in Watertown, MA and Alexander Street Press in Alexandria, VA. Subsequently the Project produced “Yucatec Maya Deaf Sign”, a documentary which studied deaf Maya persons and their unique, home-grown sign system. Recently, the Project released “Ch’a Chaac The Maya Rain Ceremony”, a chronicle of traditional magic and the many complications which arose in a community where age-old beliefs are under attack.
