Events

The Hemispheric Institute presents:

States of Migration
Film Series
November 12 – December 13, 2021

Inequalities and violence across the Americas continue to propel people from their lands in search of safety in new homes and foreign countries. In that journey toward asylum, however, migrants and refugees face increasingly punitive state regimes. Instead of welcome, they experience entrapment, detention, and deportation. Nation-states from Chile to Canada target migrants: they restrict mobility, terrorize communities, and violate human rights. Once settled in a new country, migrants not only face state discipline, but must confront strident xenophobia and racism in their communities. Many are forced once again to undertake a perilous journey toward the promise of a better home.

This series of powerful short and feature films, curated by the Hemispheric Institute, seeks to center stories of migration and expulsion from the Americas. These are tales of harrowing journeys, desperate measures, deep solidarities, and courageous political action. Filmmakers reveal not only the degradations perpetrated by nation-states and their border regimes, but also the tenacity of people who imagine life beyond their reality.

1 Week One
November 12-15

Title:	The Journey of Monalisa
Release Date:	2019
Runtime:	93 minutes
Director:	Nicole Costa
Language:	Spanish with English subtitles
Countries:	Chile, United States
Synopsis:	Chilean-born performer and writer Iván Monalisa fully embraces his/her dual selves: scrappy, masculine Iván as well as diva, travesti sex-worker Monalisa. A reunion with filmmaker Nicole Costa, Iván's former college classmate, provides the opportunity for a journey through this undocumented transgender immigrant's daily life of sex, drugs, and poetry—as well as a quest for US legalization. Pragmatic and humorous, Iván Monalisa navigates the gritty underbelly of New York City with charisma and charm. Nicole Costa intersperses recent scenes of Monalisa's attempts to get a visa and their first successes as a writer with old VHS footage, snippets of telephone conversations, and extracts from their work: beautiful, raw pieces about life and survival in New York.
Director Bio:	Nicole Costa is a Chilean actress, filmmaker, and producer based in New York with a career spanning more than 15 years. She received her Bachelor in Dramatic Arts from the University of Chile in 1997. She moved to Spain to study Audiovisual Communication at the Complutense University of Madrid in 1998. Her debut as a director for her short film Danger & Alone, co-directed with Mary Monahan in 2018, premiered at the Santiago International Film Festival (SANFIC). Her first feature documentary film, The Journey of Monalisa, premiered at the Valdivia International Film Festival in 2019 and has been selected by many international film festivals and won several awards.

2 Week Two
November 19-22

Title:	Chuj Boys of Summer
Release Date:	2021
Runtime:	17 minutes
Director:	Max Walker-Silverman
Languages:	Chuj and Spanish with English subtitles
Countries:	Guatemala, United States
Synopsis:	Speaking only his native language, a Guatemalan teenager begins his new life in rural Colorado. A true story starring those who live it.
Director Bio:	Max Walker-Silverman is a writer and director from the mountains of Southwest Colorado. His work has been awarded the Kodak Vision Award, the Special Jury Prize at SXSW, several Vimeo Staff Picks, the Panavision New Filmmaker Prize, and multiple National Board of Review Student Awards. He lives in the Mountain West where he writes stories about kindness.

Title:	Five Years North
Release Date:	2020
Runtime:	88 minutes
Directors:	Chris Temple and Zach Ingrasci
Languages:	Kaqchikel, Spanish, and English with English subtitles
Countries:	Guatemala, United States
Synopsis:	Five Years North is the coming-of-age story of 16-year-old Luis, an undocumented Guatemalan boy who just arrived alone in New York City, set against the experience of Judy, a veteran ICE officer and first-generation Cuban immigrant. Luis has come to the U.S. to make money for his family back home, all of whom are relying on him for their very survival. Getting by as a delivery boy and a cook, Luis faces all of the obstacles that come with being an undocumented worker, as well as the added burdens of being a child in a new country coping without his parents. Luis suffers anxiety and homesickness, struggles with working full-time while complying with mandated participation in the NYC school system, and feels overburdened by social workers tasked with monitoring his every move. But above all, Luis lives in constant fear of being caught by ICE. The film is intimate and observational—following Luis, Judy, and Luis' family back in Guatemala for more than three years to provide a fresh and valuable entry point to understanding America's immigration system and its human cost.
Director Bios:	Chris Temple and Zach Ingrasci are filmmakers and the founders of Optimist, a non-profit production studio that creates films with impact. They are best known for directing the feature documentaries Living On One Dollar and Salam Neighbor. Their films have been released by Netflix, Amazon Prime, National Geographic, and The Atlantic. In addition to Five Years North, they recently directed the short documentary, The Undocumented Lawyer, which premiered at Tribeca in spring 2020.

3 Week Three
November 24-29

Title:	Las Patronas’ Kitchen
Release Date:	2016
Runtime:	66 minutes
Director:	Javier García
Languages:	Spanish with English subtitles
Country:	Mexico
Synopsis:	Las Patronas' Kitchen tells the story of a group of farm women who 23 years ago realized that people were "free riding" on top of the train that crosses their community, La Patrona, in Veracruz, Mexico. They did not know who the travelers were or why they were travelling in this way. One day, Doña Leo sent her daughters to buy milk and bread. On their way back home the train was passing by and someone riding it shouted: "Mother, feed me, I am hungry." The daughters gave them what they had. They returned home fearing their mother would be mad. Instead Doña Leo told them: "When people are hungry, you have to give." Since then, the women of La Patrona have been cooking for migrants travelling on the train. Little by little their kitchen has become a political space. Las Patronas speak publicly about Mexico's problems, poverty in the countryside, human rights, society's indifference towards migrants, and their own rights as women.
Director Bio:	Javier García was born in Mexico City in 1968. He studied music and social anthropology, however in recent years his main activity has been as a photojournalist and producer. He has worked for press agencies such as AP, AFP, Imagenlatina and other journals. In 2009, he produced and photographed the short documentary film La Patrona, which was screened in several film festivals such as the Cannes Film Festival, Clermont Ferrand, and CinéRail in France. In 2014, he produced and designed the sound for the transmedia documentary Geography of Pain (Geografía del dolor), a project that depicts the heartbreaking stories of families looking for their missing relatives in Mexico. In 2017, he won the Audience Award in the Cine Las Américas Film Festival in Austin for the music video "Quemaya-ma," by the artist Patricio Hidalgo and the Afrojarocho. He considers photography as a social commitment, one that is more important than ever.

Title:	Life Between Borders: Black Migrants in Mexico
Release Date:	2017
Runtime:	15 minutes
Director:	Ebony Marie Bailey
Languages:	Spanish with English subtitles
Countries:	Mexico, Haiti, United States
Synopsis:	Thousands of Haitians seeking entry to the US are now left stranded at the northern Mexico border. But Black migration is not new to Mexico, as people from the African Diaspora have lived here for centuries. In this short documentary, we meet Haitians stuck at the border as well as Africans in Mexico City to explore Black migration and identity in Mexico.
Director Bio:	Ebony Bailey is a filmmaker from Central California whose work explores cultural intersections, diaspora, and social justice. Her documentaries have screened at film festivals and forums in the US, Mexico, South America, and Europe. She has produced videos and visual content for Mijente, LA Times, NPR and Africa is a Country. Ebony has been awarded the Samuel L. Coleman Scholarship for emerging filmmakers at the Haitian International Film Festival, and she was selected for the Tomorrow's Filmmakers Today program by HBO and Hola Mexico Film Festival. Her latest film, Jamaica y Tamarindo, won the Audience Award for Best Documentary Short at the San Diego Latino Film Festival. She is completing her Masters in Documentary Film at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

Title:	Invisible Roots: Afro-Mexicans in Southern California
Release Date:	2014
Runtime:	21 minutes
Directors:	Tiffany Walton and Lizz Mullis
Languages:	Spanish with English subtitles
Countries:	Mexico, United States
Synopsis:	More than one million Mexicans are of African descent, yet this heritage is often forgotten, denied, and many times stigmatized, both in Mexico and in Chicanx communities in the United States. Invisible Roots is an intimate look at Afro-Mexicans living in Southern California as they discuss complex issues of racial, national, and cultural identities. The Herrera family in Pasadena proudly performs the famous "La Danza de los Diablos," or "The Dance of the Devils." One of the performers explains the origins of the dance: "We have been told by our ancestors that the dance came from Africa, but when they were enslaved and brought over here, the dance became a way to make fun of the overseer." Meanwhile, the Cisneros family makes sure to keep alive the spiritual traditions and culinary secrets that they brought from Costa Chica, Mexico. Invisible Roots, the first documentary about Afro-Mexicans in Southern California, features interviews with historians Alva Moore Stevenson and Daniel Cendejaz Mendez, and music by Kemo the Blaxican.
Director Bios:	Tiffany Walton first became familiar with Afro-Mexicans after seeing Tony Gleaton's photography of the African presence in Mexico, while she was a teen. Later, she read an article in the Los Angeles Times, by John Mitchell, about Afro-Mexicans living in Southern California and wanted to learn more about their stories. As a writer and producer, Tiffany creates content for the lifestyle site, SkinGab. Lizz Mullis is a recent graduate of the University of Southern California. Influenced by her experience as a photographer and editor, Lizz has ventured into creating both fiction and non-fiction film narratives. Her ultimate goals are to create content that challenges viewers' thought processes and invites social change.

4 Week Four
December 3-6

	Two films by Director Michèle Stephenson
Title:	Elena
Release Date:	2021
Runtime:	30 minutes
Languages:	Spanish with English subtitles
Countries:	Haiti, Dominican Republic, Panama
Title:	Stateless
Release Date:	2020
Runtime:	96 minutes
Languages:	Spanish and Hatian Kreyòl with English subtitles
Countries:	Haiti, Dominican Republic, Panama
Synopsis for Elena:	In 1937, tens of thousands of Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent were exterminated by the Dominican army, on the basis of anti-black racism. Fast-forward to 2013, the Dominican Republic’s Supreme Court stripped the citizenship of anyone with Haitian parents, retroactive to 1929, rendering more than 200,000 people stateless. Because of this ruling, Elena has lost her citizenship, and her family stands to lose their rightful access to legal residency in the Dominican Republic if they don’t manage to get their documents in time. Negotiating a mountain of opaque bureaucratic processes and a racist, hostile society, Elena becomes the face of the struggle to remain in a country built on the labor of her father and forefathers. Director Michèle Stephenson’s documentary follows Elena and her family through their tribulations and small joys, as they struggle to remain in the country they’ve called home for generations.
Synopsis for Stateless:	The Dominican Republic’s 2013 Supreme Court ruling stripped the citizenship of anyone with Haitian parents, rendering more than 200,000 people stateless, without nationality, identity or a homeland. In this dangerous climate, a young attorney named Rosa Iris mounts a grassroots campaign, challenging electoral corruption and advocating for social justice. Director Michèle Stephenson’s documentary traces the complex tributaries of history and present-day politics, as state-sanctioned racism seeps into mundane offices, living room meetings, and street protests. At a time when extremist ideologies are gaining momentum in the U.S. and around the world, Stateless is a warning of what can happen in a society when racism runs rampant in the government. Filmed with a chiaroscuro effect and richly imbued with elements of magical realism, Stateless combines gritty hidden-camera footage with the legend of a young woman fleeing brutal violence to flip the narrative axis, revealing the depths of institutionalized oppression.
Director Bio:	Filmmaker, artist and author Michèle Stephenson pulls from her Panamanian and Haitian roots to think radically about storytelling and disrupt the imaginary in non-fiction spaces. She tells compelling, deeply personal stories that are created by, for and about communities of color that reimagine and provoke. She is a three-time Emmy Award nominee and winner of Tribeca and Sundance Festival Jury Prizes and a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science. Her book, Promises Kept, written with co-authors Joe Brewster and Hilary Beard, won an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work. Stephenson is also a Guggenheim Fellow and a Creative Capital artist.

5 Week Five
December 10-13

Title:	The Infiltrators
Release Date:	2019
Runtime:	95 minutes
Directors:	Cristina Ibarra and Alex Rivera
Languages:	Spanish and English with English subtitles
Countries:	United States, Mexico
Synopsis:	The Infiltrators is a docu-thriller that tells the true story of young immigrants who are detained by Border Patrol and thrown into a shadowy for-profit detention center—on purpose. Marco and Viri are members of the National Immigrant Youth Alliance, a group of radical DREAMers who are on a mission to stop unjust deportations. And the best place to stop deportations, they believe, is in detention. However, when Marco and Viri attempt a daring reverse ‘prison break,’ things don’t go according to plan. By weaving together documentary footage of the real infiltrators with re-enactments of the events inside the detention center, The Infiltrators tells an incredible and thrilling true story in a genre-defying new cinematic language.
Director Bios:	Alex Rivera is an award-winning filmmaker whose work explores themes of globalization, migration, and technology. His first feature, a cyberpunk thriller set in Mexico, Sleep Dealer, won multiple awards at Sundance and Berlin. Rivera's second feature, The Infiltrators, won the NEXT: Audience Award and the Innovator Award at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, was released theatrically in the U.S., and is currently being developed as a scripted series by Blumhouse. Rivera is a 2021 MacArthur Fellow, a Sundance Fellow, and was The Rothschild Lecturer at Harvard University. He studied at Hampshire College and lives in Los Angeles. Cristina Ibarra is a Sundance award-winning filmmaker with a 20-year practice rooted in her border crossing roots along the Texas-Mexico border. Before The Infiltrators, Ibarra's previous award-winning documentary, Las Marthas, about wealthy South Texas border debutantes who honor George Washington in Laredo, premiered on PBS's Independent Lens in 2014 and is distributed by Women Make Movies. The Last Conquistador, a documentary about the racially conflicted construction of a monument to a conquistador in El Paso, Texas, was broadcast on POV in 2008. Her award-winning directorial debut, Dirty Laundry: A Homemade Telenovela, was broadcast on PBS in 2001. She is the recipient of fellowships from Soros, Rauschenberg, Rockefeller, NYFA, CPB/PBS, NALIP, Firelight, the Sundance Women's Initiative and Creative Capita. Ibarra is a 2021 MacArthur Fellow.

The Hemispheric Institute presents the States of Migration Film Series.

This series of powerful short and feature films, curated by the Hemispheric Institute, seeks to center stories of migration and expulsion from the Americas. These are tales of harrowing journeys, desperate measures, deep solidarities, and courageous political action. Through these stories, filmmakers reveal not only the degradations perpetrated by nation-states and their border regimes, but also the tenacity of people who imagine life beyond their reality.

About this film series

Free screenings are available each week Friday through Monday, from November 12 – December 13, 2021.

About HemiTV

HemiTV is the Hemispheric Institute’s portal for live streaming and virtual programming, developed for the Zoom era and beyond.

Events

States of Migration Film Series November 12 – December 13, 2021

1

Week OneNovember 12-15

The Journey of Monalisa

The Hemispheric Institute presents the States of Migration Film Series.

About this film series

About HemiTV

States of Migration
Film Series
November 12 – December 13, 2021

Week One
November 12-15