Las Américas Film Network is pleased to present a four-part, feature-length documentary film series on immigration, exposing sides of the immigration debate you may have never seen. These films go beyond the rhetoric of policy and take an in-depth look at what it means to be migrate and to be an immigrant – whether legal or illegal. Titles include: El Inmigrante, De Nadie, Wetback and Guestworker. Collectively these films have won awards at Sundance, CineQuest, Chicago Latino Film Fest, Amnesty International Human Rights Film Festival, and many more.
Poignant, unsettling, and at times disturbing, this festival will bring a new awareness of the immigration debate to your students, community organization and patrons
Rental of the festival includes posters and postcards advertising the festival, as well as discussion points for each movie. Each festival sponsor will be given space on the website <www.immigrationfilmfest.org> to post information about their screenings. This URL will be printed on all promotional materials. The festival can be screened for audiences as free and open to the public or with a requested donation as a fund raiser. Directors may also be available for screenings at your site. Cost for the festival is $800. Special discounts for K12 schools and other organizations are available.
If you have any questions, please contact Brian Knighten at brian@lasamericasfilms.org
Titles include:
EL INMIGRANTE El Inmigrante is a documentary film that examines the Mexican and American border crisis by telling the story of Eusebio de Haro, a young Mexican migrant who was shot and killed during one of his journeys north. The film presents a distinct humanitarian focus in which story and character take precedent over policy and empiricism. Towards this end “El Inmigrante” examines the perspectives of a diverse cast of players in this border narrative. A cast which includes the de Haro family, the community of Brackettville, Texas–where Eusebio was shot, members of vigilante border militias in Arizona, the horseback border patrol in El Paso, and migrants en route to an uncertain future in the United States. AWARDS: Jury Award – Best Feature - 3rd Indianapolis International Film Festival |
Wetback follows in the footsteps of immigrants traveling from Nicaragua to the United States. On their journeys, they encounter gangs and vigilantes, as well as border patrol. The limited to interference, the director follows these individuals as they navigate real-life nightmares with uncanny calm, grace, even humor. AWARDS: Best Documentary – Cinequest De NADIE
Prepare for the journey as an unknown, a nothing, no one. Prepare to leave everything from South and Central America behind and travel alone with a vague sense of direction and the echo of your family left in your ears. Prepare to face the same intimidation and corruptive danger in Mexico as you will eventually find 1,300 miles north, when you cross into the United States–if you live through it. As rich nations sharpen their borders and differences, the poorest peoples continue to blur them in the search for liberties too universally held to be claimed by any flag. Through this burning hunger, we are drawn into DeNADIE, and through its intimate lens and enduring crew, we find ourselves confronted with a story of immigration we only thought we understood. First-time filmmaker Tin Dirdamal displays moving photographic grace and sophisticated understanding of his subjects as he follows their search for the sustenance their native countries can't provide. These personal stories force deeper understanding of the United States' border crisis, while exposing hypocrisies in a Mexican culture faced with equally uncomfortable intolerance of its own. All this from a film that doesn't take political stances; it merely brings us the voices of those affected, the results of which are far louder.Winner of the 2006 Sundanace Audience Award in World Cinema and a Mexican Ariele award for Best Feature Docuementary. AWARDS: Audience Award - Sundance Film Festival 06 |
THE GUESTWORKER
The Guestworker tells the story of Don Candelario Gonzalez Moreno, a 66-year old Mexican farmer who has been coming to the U.S. since the 1960s as a farm laborer. He is some twenty to forty years older than all the thousands of Mexican men who work in today’s United States’ H2A Guest Worker program started in 1986. Despite his age, he continues to work long hours in tobacco, cucumber, and pepper fields, sweating and worrying – all for his family, particularly his ailing wife. He says he still wants to work “harder than all the others” as he did when he was a younger man, but now knows he just can’t. Yet he is asked back, year after year, because of his commitment to hard work, his “good attitude,” and his long-term service to Wester Farms in North Carolina. We follow him through one grueling season, learning about one man’s life in-depth, and through this intimate and personal story we learn about this little-known guest worker program now already in existence for twenty years. Now airing on PBS |
CURRICULUM MATERIALS DEVELOPED BY: Breakthrough |
