Who is Dayani Cristal will definitely interest you because it relates to a topic that has been much talked about in the recent election. Although the movie was made in 2013, the four year gap still reflects the same problem in immigration than that it does now. You should definitely recommend watching the movie because whether you’re interested in the topic or not, you will leave with a whole new perspective on immigration.
The documentary is about a Honduran man named Johan who is trying to cross the border into the U.S.A. Although the man who plays Yohan (Gael Garcia) isn’t an actual immigrant, he interacts with real immigrants who show the daily struggles of crossing the border. An example of this is when he is in Mexico playing soccer at
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a shelter, the smiles people have on their face shows the importance of having a place you can rest and just be yourself without being in hiding. One of the best parts about the film is that it shows many different perspectives. This includes Yohan, Yohan’s family, The Mexican consulate, The Honduras consulate, and the Arizona immigration specialists. The film starts off with Yohan in his home country of Honduras.
It shows him getting on an unsafe boat, and attempting to get to Mexico. I found it interesting that he kept referring to god because he believed that god had also gone on the same journey. This ended up giving him the strength to succeed. Soon after they showed us the Arizona immigration experts whose job is to help find the dead bodies of people who attempted to get to the U.S illegally from Latin American countries. The role of the Arizona immigration group was to find the real identiity of the man they were calling Dayani Cristal. During the documentary they took the viewer through the process of identifying the bodies and how they handle the communication between the U.S.A and the country that the dead person is coming from. A quote I remember hearing is “sadly, many are not identified.” This quote represented the harsh truth of immigration to the U.S.A. The reason they used the man who they identified as Dayani Cristal as an example was because he had a tattoo. When they were attempting to identify Dayani Cristal, they weren’t sure where he came from, or what his actual name was. This is where the Mexican and Honduran consulate came in. First the Immigration experts spoke to the Mexican consulate because this is where the majority of immigrants come from. After they determined that there were no missing Mexican men with his description, they called the Honduran consulate. The fact that they were able to find that the man was from Honduras, was one of the few times that they were able to identify a dead person that attempted to cross the
border. The next part of the movie was the family of the man identified as Dayani Cristal being interviewed. This part was a little bit confusing as throughout the movie when they were interviewing the family, they kept referring to the man they identified as Dayani Cristal in the past tense. This was very confusing because in one scene they would show him alive and healthy, but in the next scene they would show the family talking about him as if he were dead. Not only does this movie show the day to day struggles of an immigrant, it shows their hopes and dreams. Not only will you walk away knowing something new, you will have a very different view of the word immigrant. You will definitely not regret watching this documentary!
The film tells two distinct stories. The first story is a light hearted ethnic comedy about the growing friendship between an Italian American (Bruno, a man with little positive to say about illegal immigrants finds himself working with one in this film) and a Mexican immigrant (Ignacio) both struggling with their co-dependency for each other and the stronger need for a paycheck. The second story tells us about just how uncertain the life of a migrant worker can be.
The story is told in the first person and it seems to be reasonable, because the author tells his own story. Although, he is very careful, while talking about the facts, because even the fact of the existence of this book exposes him to danger. Because the content of it, revels the reality of life in Mexico, including the life of criminals, and the way they influence the life and career of the author and the ordinary people. The story is gripping, and it simultaneously appeals to both: ethos and pathos. At the same time the author seems to be worth believing, because, on one hand, he worked for Dallas Morning News, and got...
The movie starts out with Oshinica (Oshi) and her Sephardic conservative family coming to Mexico from Turkey. Even from the moment they step off the ship, the feeling of not belonging is very obvious. They mainly speak Ladino and are unable to find where they are going in this new, strange place.
This is an immigration movie geared towards kids to show and teach them about immigration to America. It shows them the reasons they (the Mousekewitz) left their homeland Russia to come to America. In their case it was to escape the Czarist rule of the cats, parallel to most immigrants who escaped their land due to religious and political persecution. Once aboard the ship to America, it showed the long and unpleasant trip to New York Harbor, where in this movie, Fievel gets separated from his family to inclimate weather. Once they arrive in New York Harbor, it shows children the happiness immigrants got when they saw the statue of liberty and the process through Ellis Island to become a citizen of America. The rest of the movie takes place in America where it shows “political machines”, such as Warren T. Rat, who really is a cat but takes advantage of new immigrants by dressing as a mouse and receiving the mice’s trust. With trust came their money and broken promises, just as “political machines” really did back then. The movie shows the immigrants hardships and poor living conditions in America with tenement housing and unsanitary conditions.
The main characters in the film include Sebastian and Costa, who happen to be lifelong friends. Sebastian is a compulsive visionary who strives to direct controversial a film about one of history’s most influential figures, Christopher Columbus. He is determined to escalate the “myth” that western civilization's arrival in the Americas was a force for good. Instead, his story is about what Columbus set in motion; the hunt for gold, captivity of, and penal violence to those Indians who fought back. His story is counteracted by the radical priests Bartolome de las Casas and Antonio de Montesinos, the first people to ra...
Although it is desirable to incorporate personal experiences of others to get a feel of the encounters that occurred to the typical or atypical individual within the Chicano movement, this does not entirely mean that the filmmakers left out those who studied the history of it. Historian Mario T. Garcia was a prominent addition in contributing to the historical experiences within the movement and brings in credibility. The concept of utilizing Chicanos who endured the reign of oppression and discussed their involvements to the impartiality efforts was a thrilling and clever one, there was still a need of a backbone in the factual side of it. By introducing an essence of experience, it generates a personal and emotional aspect in the documentary that can be unfavorable and stray from the informative attitude of a documentary. Having Garcia apart of the documentary grounds this enlightening dimension that insights as preventative measure which is an adept move on behalf of directors Luis Ortiz and Antonio
Ariana Vivas was only 9 years old when she handed a note to Illinois Representative Luis Gutiérrez during a press conference an advocacy group had organized. Ariana, like many young Hispanics, had been born in the Unites States. However, her father was part of the recent deportations that countless of undocumented immigrants and family members dread. Ariana’s testimony of her father’s deportation is a common story among children with undocumented parents. The documentary, Immigration Battle, explores the controversial issue over immigration. Immigration Battle takes you inside the halls of Congress to give you a perspective on the fight over immigration, the debate, the politics, as well as how Washington really works.
Martinez, Oscar. Border People: Life and Society in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands. (Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1994), 232.
This movie is based on changing the lives of Mexican Americans by making a stand and challenging the authority. Even when the cops were against them the whole time and even with the brutal beatings they received within one of the walk out, they held on. They stuck to their guns and they proved their point. The main character was threatened by the school administrators, she was told if she went through with the walkout she would be expelled. While they wanted everyone who was going to graduate to simply look the other way, the students risked it all and gave it their all to make their voices
The movie opens up with rural images of thousands of migrant workers being transported in trucks with a short introduction by Edward Murrow and some occasional interventions of parts of an interview made to the secretary of labor after he saw the impacting images, and to the different people who have seen the lives the workers lead. Most of the secretary’s commentaries depict the exclusion that these people have since they are basically people who are silently crying out for assistance to stop harvesting the fields of their shame, or at least to hope for potential raises and better work conditions. From Florida to New Jersey, and from Mexico to Oregon, these people including women and children travel around the states following the sun and the demand from the seasonal goods while working around a hundred and thirty-six days earning and average of nine hundred dollars a year.
The author is using personal experience to convey a problem to his or her audience. The audience of this piece is quite broad. First and foremost, Mexican-Americans just like the author. People who can relate to what the author has to say, maybe someone who has experienced something similar. The author also seems to be seeking out an audience of white Americans who find themselves unaware of the problem at our borders. The author even offers up a warning to white America when she notes, “White people traveling with brown people, however, can expect to be stopped on suspicion they work with the sanctuary movement”(125). The purpose of this writing is to pull out a problem that is hidden within or society, and let people see it for what it is and isn’t.
Specifically, one of those was the insecurity felt by the children as they traveled through Mexico. At one point in the film, the boys talked about how they were robbed and abused by Mexican authorities. One of them spoke briefly about how it took several Mexican officials to take his watch off his arm, because he refused to hand it over. This issue leads back to one that was described earlier in this paper, the influence organized crime has on the Mexican government. The major issue that was cited in this documentary however, is the growing number of unaccompanied children traveling to the United States. This issue has two sides to it, the social side and the political side. The first side of this issue starts at the home country of each of these children. Their government is not able or not willing to help them, and as a result they live in poverty and without access the basic human needs; water, food, shelter. This leads the children to want better for themselves and ultimately to take the decision to travel to the U.S. On the political side, the unaccompanied children are causing Mexico and the United States to spend more money on Immigration. This because they have to create more detention centers for minors, they have to house and feed them until they are deported to their country of origin. Throughout the film these issues are put into the perspective of the children. The reason the directors did this, was to show the challenges the children face as they made their journey. The reason they used that perspective is because it is a unique one. It is not every day that you hear about a 12 year old who traveled across Mexico and into the United States
This movie takes place in Los Angeles and is about racial conflicts within a group of people which occur in a series of events. Since there are a wide variety of characters in this movie, it can be confusing to the viewer. In the plot, Graham is an African-American detective whose younger brother is a criminal. His mother cares more about his brother than Graham and she wants Graham to bring his brother back home, which in turn hurts Graham. Graham?s partner Ria is a Hispanic woman who comes to find that her and Graham?s ethnicities conflict when she had sex with him. Rick is the Los Angeles district attorney who is also op...
In Eduardo’s conversation with an illegal immigrant, he explains that he is working to get his family across the border
The emotional letter that Juan left for his mother might be one of the most emotional scenes in the documentary. The pure emotions that the letter was written by Juan to her mother leaves the audience with the bonds and emotions felt between the kids and families. Juan Carlos’s father abandoned the family years ago and left to New York, consequently Juan believe it is his responsibility to provide for his family. He also wants to find his father in New York and confronts him about why he has forgotten about them. The story of Juan is not just about migration of children, but also the issue of family separation. The documentary does not dehumanize but rather bring the humane and sensitive lens to the story of Juan where the human drama that these young immigrants and their families live. Juan Carlos is not the first of Esmeralda’s sons to leave for the United states, his nine-year-old brother Francisco was smuggled into California one month earlier. Francisco now lives with Gloria, his grandmother, who paid a smuggler $3,500 to bring him to Los Angeles, California. Once Juan Carlos is in the shelter for child migrants his mother eagerly awaits him outside. After she sees him she signs a paper that says if Juan Carlos tries to travel again, he will be sent to a foster home.