Amexica: Life in the Borderlands

Reginald D. Hunter's Songs of the Border

July 2018 •English

Against the backdrop of President Trump's much-trumpeted wall, Reginald D. Hunter takes a 2,000-mile road trip along the US-Mexico border to explore how romance and reality play out musically where third-world Mexico meets first-world USA on this broken road to the American dream. Classic American pop and country portray Mexico as a land of escape and romance, but also of danger; Hunter explores the border music as it is today, much of it created by musicians drawn from the 36 million Mexican-Americans who are US citizens.

Phantoms of the Sierra Madre

September 2024 •English

A Danish writer travels to Mexico with the purpose of locating a mysterious Apache tribe that fervently seeks to remain in obscurity.

Salidas y Entradas | Exits and Entrances

May 2018 •English

For the three-channel video Salidas y Entradas Exits and Entrances, artists Jessica Hankey and Erin Johnson worked with applied theatre facilitator Gina Sandi Diaz to offer performance workshops at public daytime senior centers managed by the city of El Paso’s Parks and Recreation Department. With the senior center as a stage, the elders who participated in the workshops enacted social, political and geographical imaginaries for the camera. Through improvisation and performance exercises drawn from the work of Viola Spolin and Augusto Boal, themes emerge: the dynamics of the U.S.- Mexico border, the desire to be seen, the role of musical storytelling as a soundtrack to daily life, power dynamics, and gender as performance. As the boundaries between rehearsal, improvisation, and performance blur, the ways in which individual lives and sociopolitical realities merge together are foregrounded.

ALTAR: Cruzando Fronteras, Building Bridges

October 2009 •Italian

Examines the life, work, and cultural significance of Gloria Anzaldúa, poet and visual artist, and those she inspired in women's Chicano art. The work highlights the struggle for women's and gay rights.

American Ocelot

April 2021 •English

American Ocelot tells the story of one of the most endangered and beautiful wild cats in the United States — a species so elusive that high-quality images and video have never been captured until now. With fewer than 100 individuals remaining in the US, the ocelot is critically endangered, genetically isolated, and only exists in Texas.

Through the Repellent Fence: A Land Art Film

February 2017 •English

The film follows Postcommodity, an interdisciplinary arts collective comprised of Raven Chacon, Cristóbal Martinez and Kade L. Twist, who put land art in a tribal context. The group bring together a community to construct the Repellent Fence, a two-mile long ephemeral monument “stitching” together the US and Mexico.

Walls of Silence

May 2019 •Korean

Mexico─United States border bar, “Trump Wall” is full of displaced migrants’ grief. Gaston who came to America as a teenager, is expelled from the States at his 40s and meets his family at the Wall. Bassam and Rami, becomes a dad who lost their daughter by each other. This film describes the people who lost their family by the wall and includes the views of refugees, human rights. Actor Jung Woo Sung participated in narration of the film.

Borderland Blues

May 2017 •English

„The Frontier“ or „La Frontera“ is the undulating landscape of the Sonora Desert in Arizona, which once was a symbol of freedom on the horizon of the American West – and also a region plagued by recurrent territorial struggles. Currently, a high steel fence stretches over several miles strictly separating the USA and Mexico into two territories. Every year, the remains of hundreds of migrants are retrieved from the area. The tense situation in Arizona’s borderland has split the locals into two groups: one demanding a more technically advanced border control system, the other requesting more humanitarian help. Accompanying various locals, NGO workers and self-proclaimed border guards from the region, filmmaker Gudrun Gruber raises the question of whether the latest border control technology will finally bring peace to the area, or rather merely increase the number of deaths.

Borderland

April 2024 •English

A powerful set of stories of “righteous persons” taking action along the U.S.-Mexico border, motivated by moral conviction and compassion. "Borderland" shows how courageous actions can lead to political mobilization and the defense of human rights in the face of hate and discrimination.

Which Way Home

January 2009 •English

Follows unaccompanied child migrants, on their journey through Mexico, as they try to reach the United States.

Refuge(e)

March 2019 •English

Refuge(e) traces the incredible journey of two refugees, Alpha and Zeferino. Each fled violent threats to their lives in their home countries and presented themselves at the US border asking for political asylum, only to be incarcerated in a for-profit prison for months on end without having committed any crime. Thousands more like them can't tell their stories.

Borderlands

November 2019 •English

With shared economic, environmental, and humanitarian concerns, communities of local planners, designers, and citizens work toward cross-border collaboration. Ronald Rael, an architecture professor, takes an opportunity to use art to prove the uselessness of building borders.

El Otro Lado

June 2024 •Spanish

Mr. Trump, Pardon the Interruption

September 2019 •Spanish

An analysis of the impact on the United States Latino community of immigration policies promoted by President Donald Trump.

On the Road with Mary

June 2005 •French

Why don't we do something to ease the suffering of the poor, the excluded? Because we live in fear of "the other," the stranger. Filmed a few months before the 2004 presidential election, On the Road with Mary is a gripping view of an America living in fear. From a miserable neighbourhood in Detroit ravaged by crack and violence, to the militarized border with Mexico, this potent road movie exposes the unbearable other side of the American Dream.

Birth on the border

January 2018 •Spanish

One million people legally cross the U.S.-Mexico border every day in both directions. Among them are women from Ciudad Juárez who cross to give birth in El Paso, Texas. Even with visas that allow them to cross, their journeys are uncertain. Gaby and Luisa, two women from Ciudad Juárez, cross legally into El Paso, Texas, in order to give birth. Two Chicana midwives in El Paso, Lina and Sandra, support the women who cross. After living through the extreme violence that engulfed Ciudad Juárez from 2008-2012 and with the looming threat of obstetrical violence in Mexican hospitals, Gaby and Luisa choose to cross, seeking a safer future for their children and the opportunity for natural childbirth with midwives. They risk losing their visas, getting turned back, and harassment at the hands of U.S. Border Patrol. Against the backdrop of oppressive U.S. border policy, these women's stories of risk and resilience reveal the complexities of life on the U.S.-Mexico border.

AMERICA Unfiltered IV

October 2024 •German

The storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, still reverberates today. However, the presidency of Joe Biden, despite visible economic successes and strong employment figures, finds little resonance among voters. Markus Lanz is traveling to the United States once more to find out how the country and its people are faring. Do they once again believe in the promises, lies, and conspiracy theories of Donald Trump, or are they, for the first time in their history, venturing down a new path with a woman president at the helm? Does the world’s oldest democracy still have a chance with Kamala Harris? Illegal immigration along the Mexican border is more than ever one of the dominant topics in the election campaign. On a journey to the U.S.-Mexican border region, Markus Lanz and writer Anabel Münstermann meet refugees, aid workers, and residents on both sides of the border, experiencing firsthand what it truly means to leave one’s homeland to start a new life in the United States.

Forrest Trump. Amerika vor der Schicksalswahl.

Invalid date •German

Hora Por Año

Invalid date •Spanish

Someday It Will Fall

June 2022 •English

From the mouth of the Rio Grande to the beaches of Tijuana, two girls play on separate ends of the U.S. Mexico border thousands of miles apart.