Script File

The Battle of the Fishermen

The Battle of the Fishermen is the screenplay for a short historical animation film about the struggle of the people of Vieques, Puerto Rico, who mobilized over many decades to get the U.S. Navy out of their island.
For over 60 years, the U.S. Navy used Vieques as a bombing range and a site to practice amphibious landings. This caused enormous suffering to the local population, who lived with the sound of bombs day and night. The island is still contaminated with uranium, mercury, and other heavy metals from the ammunition and explosives, and unexploded ordnance can still be found. Many Vieques families have lost loved ones to cancer, which doctors attribute to the contamination of the soil, water, and air.
The fishermen of Vieques organized, and they spearheaded a movement that eventually ousted the most powerful Navy in the world. With their small boats, they confronted the warships of the U.S. Navy and its NATO allies, and they succeeded in stopping their military exercises. In this battle, David defeated Goliath.

  • PABLO ANDRÉS FERNÁNDEZ
    Writer
    The Voice of the Mapuche
  • Project Title (Original Language):
    La batalla de los pescadores
  • Project Type:
    Screenplay
  • Number of Pages:
    26
  • Language:
    English
  • First-time Screenwriter:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Green Unplugged Film Festival
    December 15, 2011
    FIRST PLACE - PEOPLE ́S CHOICE, MOST VIEWED DOCUMENTARY
  • 27th Bogotá Film Festival Bogotá, Colombia
    October 30, 2010
    BEST DOCUMENTARY – ENVIRONMENTAL FILM SECTION
  • X Indigenous Peoples’ Film and Video Festival Quito and different communities throughout Ecuador
    October 15, 2010
    SPECIAL MENTION – CULTURAL DIVERSITY (UNESCO/EICTV)
  • VI Latin American Festival of Independent Documentary Film and Video “All Voices Against Silence” Mexico City, Mexico
    April 15, 2010
    SPECIAL MENTION – HUMAN RIGHTS SECTION
  • 3rd Social and Human Rights Film Festival Valparaíso, Chile
    January 15, 2009
    BEST FILM AWARD - INDIGENOUS PEOPLES SECTION
Writer Biography - PABLO ANDRÉS FERNÁNDEZ

Pablo Fernández is an award–winning documentary filmmaker and journalist with over 20 years of experience. He was born and raised in Argentina, and now lives in the United States.

Pablo co–directed and co–produced the documentary The Voice of the Mapuche, which was selected at over 30 international film festivals and won awards in the categories of Indigenous Peoples, Human Rights, Environment, and Cultural Diversity. The Voice of the Mapuche was acquired and broadcast by Al Jazeera Documentary Channel (Middle East and North Africa), ARTV (Chile), and Canal Capital (Colombia).

Before starting that project, Pablo had performed various roles in the production of other documentaries, such as Septembers, One Year One Day, Code Name: Butterflies, and El Yali Wetlands: The Heritage of Water.

He began working as a journalist, at the age of 17, as a co–producer and co–presenter for the legendary radio program Nueva Canción y Demás, that was broadcast on New York City’s WKCR-FM. As part of that program’s team, he had the opportunity to meet and to interview such inspirational world figures as human rights defender and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Rigoberta Menchú and renowned writer and historian Eduardo Galeano.

Before the El Salvador peace accords were signed, he traveled to that Central American country and worked on a report that explained how Salvadoran civil society organizations struggled to put an end to war and repression.

He participated in the launch of CBS Telenoticias, the first 24–hour Spanish–language news network that reached the whole American continent. As an executive producer, Pablo coordinated the teams that provided special coverage for events of worldwide significance.

After that experience, Pablo joined the launch of CNN en Español’s 24–hour operations. He traveled to Argentina as a reporter and producer. As part of his coverage, he grilled that country’s Minister of Interior about police brutality, and he questioned the Minister of Economy about the debt–based currency scheme that would eventually cause Argentina’s social and political meltdown.

In Washington, D.C. and New York City, he produced reports and short documentaries for Catalonia’s Public Television. Pablo coordinated the coverage of special sessions of the United Nations’ Security Council and General Assembly that preceded the second invasion of Iraq.

As a reporter for Al Jazeera English (AJE) in Chile, he researched and produced news packages about the fate of the other miners in Copiapó after their 33 trapped co–workers were rescued, environmental initiatives to combat smog in the Chilean capital, and the forced sterilization of women living with HIV, among other issues.

Pablo holds an M.S. in Global Media and Cultures from the Georgia Institute of Technology, a Graduate Certificate in Translation and Interpretation from Georgetown University, and a B.A. in Spanish and Latin American Literature from William Paterson University.

Most importantly, he has been to every continent and he has swum in the waters of all three major oceans.

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Writer Statement

While I had a general idea about the decades-long struggle of the people of Vieques to oust the U.S. Navy from their island, transcribing dozens of interviews in 2020, and learning from the protagonists’ first-hand accounts about the difficulties that they faced and the victories that they were able to achieve was truly fascinating, and was an incentive to disseminate this part of Puerto Rican history that is rarely covered by the mass media in the United States. That is precisely one of the main goals of my project: to convey this under-reported story to the world.