Indocumentales / Undocumentaries: The US/Mexico Interdependent Film Series, the innovative collaborative and itinerant series of documentary film screenings and dialogues on immigration issues, created by what moves you?, Cinema Tropical, and the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at New York University is celebrating its second anniversary with a special of screenings in New York City and San Francisco featuring Luis Argueta’s abUSed: The Postville Raid (pictured) and Natalia Almada's Al Otro Lado.
On Wednesday, May 9, the series will present abUSed: The Postville Raid at the King Juan Carlos Center at New York University followed by an interactive discussion with the filmmaker Luis Argueta and leading immigration activists. The documentary film tells the story on the infamous Iowa raid in 2008, the largest immigration raid in the history of the country, that resulted on the detention of 389 immigrant workers from Mexico and Guatemala, and that had devastating effects of the immigration policies on communities, families and children.
On Thursday, May 24, Indocumentales will screen Natalia Almada’s Al Otro Lado at the Artists’ Television Access in San Francisco in partnership with Cine+Mas. Almada’s acclaimed documentary tells the story of a young Mexican aspiring composer in Sinaloa who faces two choices to better his life: trafficking drugs or crossing the border into the United States.
The series was designed to inform, inspire, and enable an open exchange of views on some of today’s pressing immigration-related issues, by showcasing documentary feature films by directors from both sides of the border. Each screening is followed by an informal interactive discussion with guests of diverse backgrounds, sectors and experience.
Indocumentales began in New York City, on Cinco de Mayo (May 5) of 2010, at NYU’s King Juan Carlos Center, and has since been hosted at a variety of venues in the New York area, and across the country including Tucson, Arizona; Madison, Wisconsin; Washington D.C.; New Orleans, Louisiana; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, among other places. In addition to public screenings and dialogues, workshops tailored to engage educators, parents and youth have also been organized and efforts are currently underway to develop K-12 teaching materials
Among other films, the series has featured Los que se quedan / Those Who Remain (Carlos Hagerman and Juan Carlos Rulfo); Mi vida dentro / My Life Inside (Lucía Gajá); Farmingville (Carlos Sandoval and Catherine Tambini); and Elvira (Javier Solórzano Casarin).
