Announcing a new weekly feature: Every Friday I’ll upload an eye-opening short film capturing the modern and authentic bi-literate American experience made by a talented multi-cultural American Filmmaker to Know.
To inaugurate the series I’m pleased to post the short film Laredo, Texas by Topaz Adizes, which screened at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. With such short sighted, stat-driven, divisive and one sided media-induced rhetoric swirling around immigration reform and undocumented labor presently, this film offers a compassionate, layered and intimate glimpse, humanizing the issue and demonstrating its psychological depth. At just about 11 minutes, the story quickly simmers and cuts into the heart of the compelling conflict between two points of view, which we get to see play out in a way that feels credible, because the circumstances that have led these two completely seemingly different people in such close proximity is a common instance of how life revolves. Substantial, economical and veracious, it’s hard to tell this is a ‘scripted narrative’ and not a straight up documentary – a unique quality Topaz crafts in his films which tend to delve into the interconnection of national and cultural identity and how it confronts perception and ideology, all within a framework of transnationalism and globalism. His work has screened at numerous international festivals, and his Americana Project, shot around the world explores what it means to be American and is available for educational purposes. He is currently working on a couple new feature films. I highly recommend you get to know his meaningful, sociological and humanistic docudrama storytelling. Check out his work on his website.
Chicana from Chicago 