By Chantal Akerman
The story is old as the hills, yet every day it continues to unfold, every day more terribly.
Sometimes poor people, in an attempt to survive, risk their lives and leave everything behind to live elsewhere. But they're not wanted elsewhere. And if they are wanted it's for their labor, to do jobs that no one wants to do. Some will pay for others to do those jobs, but not much.
In FROM THE OTHER SIDE, elsewhere is the United States and the poor are mostly Mexicans. Renowned filmmaker Chantal Akerman shifts her focus between the border towns of Agua Prieta, Sonora, where people from all over Mexico wait in limbo before crossing over, and neighboring Douglas, Arizona, a town ringed by mountains and desert plains.
For years, immigrants passed through San Diego. But now the INS, using cutting edge technologies developed during the Vietnam War and perfected for the Gulf War, has managed to quell the flow of illegals there. This leaves only the mountains and deserts of Arizona for those desperate enough to try their luck.
The film opens with a series of interviews with Mexicans in Agua Prieta, many of whom have family members that have perished while crossing the border. In another interview, a local sheriff in Arizona comments on the government's crackdown as "a bad strategy and a bad plan," calling the elevated death toll "a calculated consequence."
The INS calculated that the hardship and danger, the cold and the heat in Arizona, would stop the crossings, but you can't stop someone who's hungry. But you fear him. Fear the other; fear his filth, the disease he may be bringing in. Fear invasion. But never fear to kill him.
Reviews
~ "Stunning. As human testimonyˇ FROM THE OTHER SIDE is unforgettably forceful. Its strongest features? The silences into which the witnesses fall, the volumes of empty space that haunt Akerman's frames, the deathly voids into which too many immigrants have disappeared." - Stuart Klawans, The Nation
~ "A spare, painterly and scrupulously unsentimental look at the plight of illegal Mexican immigrants massed at the United States border. Both eerily beautiful and filled with a quiet compassion." - Dave Kehr, New York Times
~ "Chillingˇ stunningly composedˇ Akerman, in a few deft interviews, shows the hypocrisy and paranoia involved in U.S. immigration policy and its failure to acknowledge the economic dependence of the U.S. on undocumented laborers." - Amy Taubin, Film Comment
~ "An unsentimental look at paranoia, border-style, as natives rant about 'the daily war against the enemy.'" - Chicago Sun-Times
~ "Insightful and visually interesting ˇ Without pushing the agenda too hard, the filmmaker quietly uncovers the presiding desire for a better life, adequate housing and family support most of the subjects believe the move to America will facilitate." - Variety
~ "Sensitive portraiture and investigative journalism. Ackerman's respectful, inquisitive distance from her subjects recalls some of Walker Evans' photographs. - Chicago Reader
Award
~ 2003 Award of Merit in Film, Latin American Studies Association
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