CWC Docs: Borderland | The Line Within
- Tuesday, October 8, 2024 / 7:00 PM - 9:40 PM (PDT)
- Pollock Theater
- Screening Format: 4K digital projection (110 minutes)
- With Pamela Yates (director)
The United States border is not just a geographic line. The border is everywhere, a looming threat for every undocumented family at risk of being captured, incarcerated, and deported. Borderland | The Line Within is an urgent critique of the border-industrial complex, exposing the profitable business of immigration and its human costs, and how its oppressive structure is deeply entwined in American politics and society. The film was produced over a period of five years with the assistance of three experimental digital humanists and painstaking research and web scraping efforts. Weaving together the stories of immigrants building networks and mobilizing communities, the film highlights a dynamic and growing movement in the shadow of the border-industrial complex, fighting for the human rights of all.
Director Pamela Yates will join moderator Giovanni Batz (Chicana and Chicano Studies UCSB) for a post-screening discussion of Borderland | The Line Within.
This event is free but a reservation is recommended in order to guarantee a seat.
Biographies
Director Pamela Yates
Pamela Yates is an award-winning film director and the co-founder of Skylight, a not-for-profit media organization that for over 35 years has combined cinematic arts with the quest for justice to inspire the defense of human rights. She is the director of the Sundance Special Jury award-winning When the Mountains Tremble; the executive producer of the Academy Award-winning Witness to War; and the director of State of Fear: The Truth About Terrorism, which has been translated into 47 languages and broadcast in 154 countries. Her film Granito: How to Nail a Dictator, for which she was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship, was used as key forensic evidence in the genocide trial against Efraín Ríos Montt in Guatemala. Her third film in the Guatemalan trilogy, 500 YEARS, had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, was broadcast on POV/PBS, streamed as part of Amazon Prime Festival Stars, and is currently in wide release. Pamela is a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, Writers Guild of America, and the International Documentary Association, and is on the Advisory Board of the Woodstock Film Festival.
Giovanni Batz (Chicana and Chicano Studies, UCSB)
Dr. Giovanni Batz is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of The Fourth Invasion: Decolonizing Histories, Megaprojects, and Ixil Maya Resistance in Guatemala (2024, University of California Press) and La Cuarta Invasion (2022) published by Asociación para el Avance de las Ciencias Sociales in Guatemala. His research focuses on human and indigenous rights, extractivist industries, Guatemalan history, and U.S. foreign policy in Central America. He was a 2020-2022 President’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Native American Studies at the University of California, Davis, and a 2018-2019 Anne Ray Fellow at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
This event is sponsored by the Carsey-Wolf Center.
Presented in association with the Central American Studies Working Group, the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies, the Global Latinidades Center, the Robert and Liisa Erickson Presidential Chair in English, and Human Rights Watch – Santa Barbara Committee.
CWC Docs
The Carsey-Wolf Center is committed to screening documentaries from across the world that engage with contemporary and historical issues, especially regarding social justice and environmental concerns. Documentaries allow filmmakers to address pressing issues and frame the critical debates of our time.