First Contact (1983 film)
"First Contact" is the first documentary in what later became known as "The Highland Trilogy". The other two films are "Joe Leahy's Neighbours" (1989) and "Black Harvest" (1992). These three films, between them, have won some thirty major awards, included each film winning both the Grand Prix at the Festival Cinéma du Réel in Paris and AFI Award for Best Documentary.
René Fortunato
Fortunato's first film "In the Footsteps of Palau", was a 20-minute short that told the history of the first Dominican filmmaker Francisco Palau. Palau was active in the 1920s and was a seminal figure of Dominican filmography. His second film "Frank Almánzar: Images of an artist", was debuted in 1987 and was about the Dominican visionary Bauhaus-trained engraver, illustrator and cultural animator Frank Almánzar. Then in 1988 he achieved national and international fame due to the success of his full-length documentary "April, the Trench of Honor". The documentary won Best Documentary of the Caribbean region, in the II International San Juan Film Festival. The documentary is an account of the political situation in the Dominican Republic from the death of dictator Rafael Trujillo in 1961, to the election of Joaquín Balaguer in 1966. Particular focus goes into the 1965 civil war and the subsequent U.S. military invasion. After the success of his documentary, Fortunato went on to make documentaries about Trujillo, Balaguer, and Juan Bosch, which bridge Dominican history and politics from the 1940s to the 1990s.