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Gringo-thon Get Details and Purchasing Info
Greg Berger
Short 17 minutes 2003
With English subtitles
In this brilliant and hilarious parody, filmmaker Greg Berger takes on the theme of Mexican perspectives of the U.S., its citizens, and its imperial project by turning them on their ear. During the invasion of Iraq in the spring of 2003, a misplaced gringo in Mexico City helplessly watches the atrocities through the lens of Mexican television news. His despair turns to hope when he observes some of the millions of Mexico City street vendors who fight their own daily "war" for survival on the streets. Tongue planted firmly in cheek, the film shows how their tenacity inspires him to take to the streets of Mexico's capital, when, in stark role reversal, he sells chewing gum and washes windows to raise money for a guerrilla army to take out Bush. With his shorts, Hawaiian shirt, and horrendously mangled Mexican slang, Berger’s hapless gringo still manages to elicit support for his cause from the bemused Mexicans he meets. GRINGO-THON is an expression of protest from an expatriate living abroad, and also a subversive and wickedly funny meditation on the complexities of "gringo" identity in an American continent whose millions of inhabitants misunderstand each other.
Purchase Price: $ 79.95
Crosses Get Details and Purchasing Info
Laura Irene Arvizu
Documentary 18 minutes 2002
With English subtitles
Every year, thousands of undocumented immigrants cross the U.S.-Mexico border in their struggle to overcome poverty and make a better life for themselves and their families. Always risky, this crossing has become far more dangerous since the U.S. Border Patrol instituted Operation Gatekeeper in 1995. Although this initiative seeks to make the U.S. border more secure, it has not stemmed the flow of immigrants; its main effect has been to divert the routes by which they cross into the inhospitable desert and mountain regions, where every year, hundreds of migrants die from exposure and dehydration. Almost 1,800 men, women, and children have died a horrible death since Operation Gatekeeper was implemented. CROSSES documents the efforts of artists and activists to bring the disastrous effects of Operation Gatekeeper to the conscience of the people of both the U.S. and Mexico, and to pressure the governments of both countries to make efforts to find a more humane way to deal with the question of migration. In the last few years, these activists and artists have reclaimed the wall that divides the border as a backdrop for art dramatizing the plight of the migrants. In several of these projects, every death is represented by a cross bearing the name of the victim – in many cases, there is nothing to write except “not identified.” These installations, mounted directly on the wall, serve simultaneously as objects of tremendous aesthetic power, as a cry of protest to the U.S. and Mexican governments, as a call to the public, as a warning to would-be migrants, and as a poignant memorial so that the striving dreams of the migrants’ lives and the needless tragedy of their deaths not be forgotten.
Purchase Price: $ 79.95
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