284m; Australia
Director: Chris Thomson
Cast: Jack Thompson, Greta Scacchi and Frank Gallacher
Synopsis (IMDB): Australian dockyard workers go on strike. Immigrant Italian workers are brought in as scab labour. In the midst of all this, an Italian woman meets & falls in love with one of the Australians.
97m; U.S.
Director: Arturo Perez Torres, Heather Haynes
Synopsis: Wetback, a quietly commanding documentary, 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. But these immigrants navigate real-life nightmares with uncanny calm, grace, even humor. And director Arturo Perez Torres does all of us a favor by getting out of the way and allowing them to tell their stories.
Contact: http://www.ironweedfilms.com/films/wetback
5m; U.S.
Director: Alex Rivera
Synopsis: Alex Rivera, Why Cybraceros? (5 min. 1997, USA) takes the form of a mock promotional film. It is based on a real promotional film produced in the late 1940’s by the California Grower’s Council, titled Why Braceros? This film was used by the Grower’s Council to defend the use ofbraceros, or temporary Mexican farmhands. I use footage from this old industrial to briefly lay out the history of the Bracero Program in the United States. At the half way point the piece takes a sharp turn as the narrator advocates a futuristic Bracero Program in which only the labor is imported to the United States. The workers themselves are left at home in Mexico, as they Tele-commute to American farms over the high-speed Internet. The narrator explains that in this imagined future there is no difference between rich and poor on the Internet, this is a future in which truly everyone can work from home, even braceros.
This dystopic concept, of a world in which immigrants can labor in America but never live in, or become the responsibility, of American society, is to me not only a bizarre twist on the American Dream; in some ways this is the realization of the American Dream. The United States has always benefited from the low wage (and sometimes free) labor of recent immigrants, who are drawn to America, in part, by The Dream of instant success. Simultaneously, nearly every wave of new immigrants suffers through several decades of intense discrimination, and usually a combination of verbal and physical attacks. TheCybracero, as a trouble free, no commitment, low cost laborer, is the perfect immigrant. The Cybracero is the hi-tech face of the age-old American Dream.
Contact: View here – http://blog.altoarizona.com/blog/2010/04/why-cybraceros-a-mock-promotional-film-by-alex-rivera.html
22m; U.S.
Director: David Koff
Synopsis: Immigrant workers die 9/11 in Trade Tower disaster.
82m; South Africa/Zimbabwe
Director: Darrell James Roodt
Cast: Kudzai Chimbaira, Farai Veremu, Natasha Gandi, Mildred Chipuriro, Phinneus Ncube, Folen Murapa
Synopsis: Painful and topical drama about labour migration from Zimbabwe to South Africa. Seen through the eyes of a 19-year-old orphan girl, Roodt shows that border inhabitants don’t have much choice.
Contact: Hubert Bals Fund, bits@osfilmes.com.br
96m; U.S.
Director: Luis Argueta
Synopsis (IMDB): It is at once an epic story of survival, hope, and humble aspirations, of triumph, defeat, and rebirth. The face of immigration is revealed through the gripping personal stories of the individuals, the families, and the town that survived the most brutal, most expensive, and the largest immigration raid in the history of the United States.
Set within Chicago’s labyrinth of alleyways, Scrappers is a cinema verite portrait of Otis and Oscar, two scrap metal scavengers searching for a living with brains, brawn and battered pickup trucks. The film shows how globalization, the 2008 financial crisis, crackdowns on undocumented immigrants and widespread scrap metal theft affect these men and their families. (Written by Ben Kolak on IMDB)
Director: Adam Matalon
Synopsis: Jamaican H2 workers in New York’s Hudson Valley.
Contact: Adam (director/producer) 914-736-6400 6465490151 cel
151m; France
Director: Abdellatif Kechiche
Cast: Habib Boufares, Hafsia Herzi, Farida Benkhetache, Farida Benkhetache, Abdelhamid Aktouche, Leila D’Issernio
Synopsis: An idiosyncratic story about life, ambitions, frustrations, courage and indolence among North African migrant families in the south of France. After he’s laid off from the shipbuilding wharf, the ageing Slimane wants to start a restaurant on a ship.
Contact: International Film Festival Rotterdam Production Department: production@filmfestivalrotterdam.com Distributor: Pathe: florian.genetet@pathe.com Catherine MONTOUCHET: Catherine.Montouchet@pathe.com
Director: Students Informing Now (SIN)
Synopsis: Experiences of UCSC students from migrant backgrounds.
Contact: Jennifer McNulty (831) 459-2495; jmcnulty@ucsc.edu (wrote story on UCSC website: http://www.ucsc.edu/news_events/text.asp?pid=2149) Pedro Espinosa: joelfilms@gmail.com
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