Foreign Parts
May 31, 2011
(Verena Paravel, J.P. Sniadecki, 2010, USA/France, 81 min)
Trees Tropique director Alex Fattal in attendance!
In few corners of the United States is the gulf between rich and poor more dramatic than in Willets Point, a small neighborhood in Queens, New York. Dominating the landscape is the colossal Citi Field, home of the Mets—one of the country's wealthiest and most famous baseball teams. But only yards away, as Robert Koehler described in CinemaScope, is a very different world: "When the rains come, the street, lined with junkyards, auto-repair shops, auto-body shops, and auto-parts shops turns into a flood zone, with garbage floating in pools of water that fail to subside for weeks afterward. Like most of the people who work on the street, it’s tired, cracked, worn, pockmarked, and seemingly beyond repair."
An award-winner at the Locarno Film Festival, Foreign Parts chronicles the citizens of this fascinating microcosm. It takes us right into the heart of a hazardous, hardscrabble community perilously threatened by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's ambitious "gentrification" plans. It's a necessary, topical and touching film.
Screens with
Trees Tropiques
(Alex Fattal, 2009, Brazil, Blu-ray, 30 min)
This innovative and thought-provoking documentary subtly explores ethical issues when deforestation and ethnography intersect. The film incisively poses the question: Who has the right to cut—both trees and film footage?
