[HARVEST OF EMPIRE recently screened at the Cleveland International Film Festival.]
Review by Ben Lybarger
Ever wondered why someone would leave their home and their family to travel hundreds of miles by foot and by bus, hopping freight trains, risking robbery and assaults along the way, then traversing barren deserts with temperatures frequently over 100 degrees Fahrenheit only to possibly die of dehydration or gunshot wounds as they cross the U.S. border? If you listen to the constant cacophony of TV pundits belching their vitriolic claptrap, you might think they are coming here to steal menial jobs from salt of the earth "Americans" and to trill their Rs with contempt all over the English language. It turns out, though, that their motivations are quite varied and different, and that the problem with the American Dream that bewitches our citizens and immigrants alike, is that it is propped up by economic asymmetries created by corporate globalization and backed by the U.S. government.
HARVEST OF EMPIRE, eponymously titled after the book by Juan Gonzalez, endeavors not only to give snapshots of seven countries long affected by U.S. policy, but also to humanize the displaced peoples that too often exist in the collective imagination as pitiable abstractions somehow less entitled to prosper than our nation's native born.
