The Fiesta de Santo Tomas takes place over the seven days leading up to St Thomas’s Day on December 21, and is arguably one of the biggest and best annual events in Central America. Held in the relatively remote highland town of Chichicastenango, the festival combines Catholic and native Mayan traditions in a series of unique dances, processions and live music.
The highlight of this festival is when locals scale a 100ft pole tied at the hands or ankles with a rope (to the pole). This occurs near Iglesia De Santo Tomas on the 21 December. This pole dance or Palo Volador as locals call it is death defying as many locals don’t tie the rope to their body.
People travel from all over Guatemala to this tiny town to join in the festivities.
Heralded by critics and film fans, and rightly so, Central Station (Central do Brasil) is the story of an unlikely friendship between the 67-year-old Dora (Fernanda Montenegro) and a 10-year-old boy Josué (Vinicius de Oliviera). Dora works as a letter writer (employed by the illiterate) in the busy Rio de Janeiro train station. Josué’s mother pays Dora to write a letter to Josué’s long-missing father, only to be run over by a bus moments later. Out of guilt (namely since she rarely mails the letters people pay her to write – instead laughing over them with her roommate), she takes Josué into her home and eventually on a difficult journey to a remote section of Brazil to find Josué’s father.
The amazing mating display of the marvellous spatuletail hummingbird has been filmed in full for the first time.
A local family have decided to help stop deforestation by transforming their farm land, used for agricultural purposes for many years, back to what it once was, a beautiful forest providing shelter to many animals, producing oxygen, and offsetting their carbon footprint. Projects include: the planting and caring of 30,000 trees; the construction of a small pond and new water well; the design and construction of irrigation system; the integration of a solar energy system to power the farm house; the construction of an organic vegetable garden and planting of fruit trees.
The Panama jazz festival is held annually in January and aims to encourage tourism and instill a natural cultural identity. Well known stars and artists perform daily to transform the capital into a stage of art, culture and pleasure. Kids concerts, free concerts and evening concerts feature in the lineup along with a series of classes for music students to develop their skills.
After 23 years, frumpy maid Raquel occupies a curious position somewhere between a mere domestic and a member of the Valdes family she has so faithfully served. But she’s also perpetually sullen, borderline antisocial and intensely territorial. Constant clashes with the eldest Valdes daughter, Camila, raise fears that Raquel is overworked, so more help is hired to assist her. Naturally this does not sit well with Raquel, who, feeling usurped, cooks up childish pranks and devious schemes to get rid of the interlopers. Eventually, she meets the spirited young assistant Lucy, who becomes the catalyst for Raquel’s rediscovery of herself. Astonishing in its intimacy, The Maid wrings awkward humour from the alienated Raquel’s mind games, but her evolution is touching. This remarkably astute film is not only a study of class division in the commonplace Latin American practice of domestic servitude, but also an engrossing character study of a singular individual. Unfolding almost entirely within the house’s walls, Sebastian Silva’s second feature achieves and sustains an impressive degree of claustrophobic momentum in scenes churning with passive-aggressive comedy, impeccably observed detail and emotional violence.
The double album Gotan Project Live is the first live recording from electro-tango pioneers Gotan Project. Recorded at London’s Kentish Town Forum and Neuchâtel, Switzerland, the album features material from their La Revancha Del Tango and Lunático world tours. Left-looking spinners Gilles Peterson, Thievery Corporation, Peter Kruder, UFO, Jazzanova, Rainer Trüby, Herbert and Mr. Scruff have all championed their fusion of tango, dub and beats since their debut single “El Capitalismo Foraneo” appeared in January 2000. Subsequently recording cover versions of the theme from Last Tango In Paris and a dubbed-out take on Frank Zappa’s “Chunga’s Revenge,” Gotan Project have consistently pushed the boundaries of traditional tango, creating willfully weird but strangely compelling music that ignores both geographical and musical borders.
Quinoa (keen-wah) has its origins in the high upper Andes. The Incas credited quinoa with medicinal and magical properties, and held the crop to be sacred, referred to quinoa as “chisaya mama” or “mother of all grains”. The Inca emperor would traditionally sow the first seeds of the season using ‘golden implements.’ It has been in continuous cultivation in Colombia. Ecuador. Peru, Bolivia. Chile and Argentina for over 6000 years. Both the seeds and the young leaves can be used as food. 
One of the world’s leading climate change gurus urged people to become vegetarian, to help beat global warming.