CSRC Cinema
and Media Series
 Volume
4:
Frontierland / Fronterilandia
(1995)
The border in the popular imagination
of the U.S. and Mexico.
Co-directed and
edited by Jesse Lerner and Rubén Ortiz Torres
This DVD examines the multiple
points of cultural contact between the United States and Mexico. From
the Santa Barbara Fiestas and South Carolina's kitschy “South of the Border”
tourist complex, to a Mexican Beatles cover band and Chicano rap, this
film reveals the borderlands as a laboratory of hybridity that continues
to ignite the popular imagination of each nation. Working at the boundaries
of experimental film and documentary travelogue, this film weaves together
found footage, interviews, performance art, and music video, producing
a masterful commentary that is at once poetic, disturbing and hilarious.
Includes appearances by Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Aztlán
Underground, among others.
1995, 16mm, color, 77:00. In
English, Spanish, Nahuatl, with subtitles in English and Spanish. Original
musical composition by Gabriela Ortiz. Released on DVD in 2005.
UPC: 049168032867
DVD includes important bonus material
on border culture and the filmmakers.
Jesse Lerner is a documentary filmmaker
based in Los Angeles. His films include T.S.H. (2004), The American Egypt
(2001), and Ruins (1999). He has curated projects for the Robert Flaherty
Seminar, the Centro Fotográfico Manuel Alvarez Bravo in Oaxaca,
and the Guggenheim Museums in New York and Bilbao. He is currently an
associate professor of media studies at the Claremont Colleges.
Rubén Ortiz-Torres is a
Mexican-born artist living and working in Los Angeles. His work spans
a diverse range of media including and often combining photography, film
and video, sculpture, and customized cars and machines. Ortiz-Torres is
currently a professor of visual arts at the University of California,
San Diego.
This DVD is part of an ongoing
Chicano Cinema Recovery Project in collaboration with the UCLA Film and
Television Archive. .
Program content © Jesse Lerner
and Rubén Ortiz-Torres. All rights reserved.
Package Design and Summary ©
2005 UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center
Super-8 and high-8 video, B
& W and color, 56 minute (broadcast) and 78 minute (film) versions.
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