100 Ways to Cross the Border

Amber Bay Bemak / Mexico, United States / 2022 / 84 min
❮
❯

  • BFI London Film Festival

  • DocLisboa Int'l Film Festival

  • BAMcinemaFest

  • NewFest New York’s LGBTQ+ Film Fest

  • Athens Int'l Film Festival

Related Films
The Journey of MonalisaThe Journey of MonalisaNicole CostaChilean-born performer and writer Iván Monalisa fully embraces his / her dual selves: scrappy, masculine Iván as well as diva, transvestite sex-worker ...Angélica [a tragedy]Angélica [a tragedy](Angélica [una tragedia])Manuel Fernández-ValdésRecipient of important awards in Spain and abroad, Angélica Liddell’s dramaturgy is considered one of the most avant-garde in contemporary ...Blooming on the AsphaltBlooming on the Asphalt(Germino Pétalas No Asfalto)Coraci Ruiz, Julio MatosAs Jack starts his gender transition process, Brazil is plunged into a wave of extreme conservatism. For five years, we follow the transformations in ...HorizonsHorizons(Horizontes)Eileen Hofer Alicia Alonso’s splendor still radiates throughout the world of ballet today. A star so brilliant, she has captivated audiences worldwide. Even now at ...Off the RoadOff the Road(Fuera del camino)José PermarEach year, the slow-paced lifestyle on Mexico’s largest desert in Baja Peninsula is given a turbo boost by the Baja 1000, the largest off-road ...
Pricing
INQUIRE ABOUT OTHER LICENSES AND/OR DVD AVAILABILITY
3 year DSL license with PPR$449Buy Now
Perpetual DSL license with PPR$549Buy Now
K-12, Public Libraries, Community Groups 3 year DSL license$200Buy Now
Related Subjects
Download

English and Spanish with English and Spanish subtitles

With Guillermo Gómez-Peña

This vibrant documentary celebrates Guillermo Gómez-Peña and the contribution his radical, queer, anti-colonial art has made to conversations around border thinking, gender politics, and Latinx identity.

‘I’ve been fighting to control my image for only 40 years and the fight never ends!’, notes Gómez-Peña ironically, turning the camera for a moment on the film’s director Amber Bay Bemak, reversing the gaze. The moment encapsulates their life as a Mexican/Chicanx performance artist, activist, and founder of the trans-disciplinary arts organization La Pocha Nostra (LPN), as well as Bemak’s approach as a documentary filmmaker.

Both attempt to queer all sorts of borders – not only territorial but also those relating to race, gender, sexuality, and even filmmaking. With intimacy and honesty, this film shares Gómez-Peña and LPN’s ethos and practice, creating an open space for collaboration both behind and in front of the camera, resulting in a work that embodies LPN’s multi-centric and fluid approach to narrative.

Press

“A playfully provocative delve into the work of performance artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña and his dance/art troupe La Pocha Nostra, Amber Bemak’s engagingly breezy and busy documentary manages to offer plenty of insight into culture and politics while also playfully blurring the line between filmmaker and subject.” – Mark Adams , Business Doc Europe

“A tantalising compilation of provocations. Each performance is an agitation against unfreedom, each tactic a crossing of borders into a potentially better beyond. There may not be one hundred ways on offer, but that’s probably because the film wants the viewer to create their own—to join in on the fun. One hundred is low, if that’s the case. Why don’t we shoot for one thousand?” – Bomb Magazine

About the Director
Amber Bemak is a filmmaker, artist, and educator. Her work is based on experimental and documentary films. For the past two decades, she has been engaged in a multi-layered exploration of performance and film which uses the body as a sight for socio-political inquiry, engages with text, language, and translation to open up discourse around deeply embedded colonization narratives, and commits to linking the intimate and personal with larger institutional structures. Her work draws from cinematic practice, pedagogy around ethics of representation, queer theory and lived experience, a deep commitment to a global perspective, and Buddhist philosophical frameworks and cultures.

Amber’s work has been seen at venues including the Brooklyn Museum, the Rubin Museum of Art, SculptureCenter, the Schwules Museum, and the Tamayo Museum. Festivals include Oberhausen, Ann Arbor, DocLisboa, Morelia, and the European Media Art Festival. She has taught film theory and practice in India, Nepal, Kenya, Mexico, and the United States.

❌