Program 3: From the Other Side April 4, 2011 4:30PM UMBC, Lecture Hall 7 Screening presented in conjunction with the exhibition, Where Do We Migrate To? About From the Other Side Chantal Akerman 2001, DVD, 99 minutes, Belgium/France In From the Other Side, Chantal Akerman looks at the harsh environment of the US Mexican border, where cutting edge technologies of surveillance have been systematically employed to limit illegal northbound passage to America. Shifting her lens between the border towns of Agua Prieta in Sonora, where people from across Mexico pass their time before attempting to cross into America, and the neighboring Douglas, Arizona, surrounded by mountains and desert flatlands, Akerman depicts the personal as well as the political implications of illegal immigration. About Where Do We Migrate To? This film program, curated by Sonja Simonyi and presented in partnership with the Film and Media Studies Program at Johns Hopkins University, presents a series of audiovisual materials, feature length fiction films, documentaries, as well as experimental videos. The selected films demonstrate the diverging ways in which networks of migration, experiences of displacement, and questions of belonging and rootlessness have been addressed by artist and filmmakers in recent years. While a selection of films engage with migratory practices as central to our understanding of the present-day self in increasingly globalized and multicultural settings, other works investigate the complex historical processes that frame these contemporary conditions. The program thus provides a rich sampling of ways in which the ongoing circulation of people across regions, nations and continents, is addressed and questioned from multiple political, social, cultural and historical perspectives in film and video art.
