EL MAR LA MAR

Synopsis

The sun beats down mercilessly on all those who cross the Sonoran Desert between Mexico and the United States: the few people who live here, and the poorest of undocumented immigrants that try to cross the border. Their traces and remains accumulate, fade, decompose and become inscribed into the topography of the landscape, making the absent ever-present as life and death, beauty and dread, hostile light and nights aglitter with stars continue to exist alongside one another.

Director Biography

Joshua Bonnetta (b. 1979, Canada) is an interdisciplinary artist working with analogue film and sound based in Ithaca, NY and New York City. His work explores the perceptual encounter of place and how it is shaped by history. His recent works have focused on the sonic ecology of the Sonoran Desert, the first wireless radio transmission and the relationship between color and representation in the now obsolete motion picture film stock Kodachrome.

J.P. Sniadecki is a filmmaker and anthropologist whose work explores the social contours of direct observation. He has made several films in China, including People’s Park (2012), Yumen (2013), and The Iron Ministry (Festival 2015). Foreign Parts (Festival 2011), his documentary of life in the Willets Point neighborhood of Queens (co-directed with Véréna Paravel), won the Golden Leopard and Special Jury Prize at the Locarno International Film Festival.