After having seen The Visitor, Welcome a part of 14 Kilometres, and some shorcuts about racism, debate in groups about some of the following points:
1.What do you think about the reasons to emigrate of the different characters from the films?(political reasons, gender and violence matters,love reasons, economical reasons…to reach a dream -become a football player-)
2. After talking to your parents, grandparents…could you talk about people from your country who emigrated? Why did they go to America, other European countries? Do you know something about this matter?
3.Game.
a)”Ponerse en el lugar del otro” What would you do if you were in his/her place?(chose any of the characters from the films).
b)What would you do in five or six years time,time to look for a job, if the unemployment situation continues?.
Video related to the two topics we have seen up till now.
Follow part of this lecture or talk by <a href=”http://www.ted.com/talks/view/lang/eng//id/652″ target=”_blank”>CHIMAMANDA ADICHIE</a> (a Nigerian writer)to be discussed in class.
In the link you can choose English or Spanish subtitles.
In Youtube you can see the first part with Spanish subtitles.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BpsnLw368M[/youtube]
[youtube]http://dotsub.com/view/63ef5d28-6607-4fec-b906-aaae6cff7dbe[/youtube]
Said´s journey (short cut)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGjjx3WMmSE[/youtube]
THE VISITOR 1.45″ -2008/
by Thomas McCarthy (director of THE STATION AGENT 2003 a very good film)
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After watching the film, read the following questions and work in class with your partners to talk about them.
1.- Find out the meaning of the following legal terms:
asylum, bag and baggage letter, deportation, detention, removal proceeding or deportation proceeding, due process, green card.
2- Which of the characters in the film did you relate to most? Why?
3-Why do you think Walter decides to let Tarek and Zainab stay at his apartment even though he knows nothing about them?
4-In your opinion, who is “the visitor”? In what way is each character “visiting”?
5- What was the most memorable moment in the film? Why?
6-Think of someone in your life who immigrated to your country. Why did they come here? What hardships has s/he faced as an immigrant?
7-What was your impression of the detention center? What did you notice? Is this different from what you expected?
8-What do we as global/American citizens have to gain or lose by providing immigrants and refugees with the right to due process?
9-What are arguments for and against detaining immigrants and refugees in prison-like conditions?
10-Can you think of alternative ways the U.S. government could handle cases like Tarek’s?
11-How do you think Tarek’s deportation will affect each character’s view of the world?
12-Is there any situation in the film you could consider racist?
These questions are taken from “The Visitor” Discussion Guide.
Read part of one of the reviews. Do you agree with the last paragraph? Do you have anything to add?
Review:
…a mellow, laid-back, and entirely satisfying little “people” movie, one that finds the beauty in the small gestures of genorisity: McCarthy finds a lot of beauty in the strangest friendships, and as The Visitor moves into more political areas (Tarek gets tossed into jail for no good reason), the director is careful to let the characters take precedence over the “issues.” Obviously the film has a lot to say about the Arab experience in America today, but The Visitor is much more interested in its interpersonal relationships than it is in climbing a soapbox and preaching to the choir. (Icing on the cake: In addition to Jenkins’ fantastic performance, newcomer Haaz Sleiman (as Tarek) is really quite excellent.)
The result is a movie with a message, sure, but it works even better as a touching look at a lonely man who finds some warmth, friendship and affection in the most unexpected of places: His own forgotten apartment.
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WELCOME – Movie Trailer
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Questions (from Didactic Guide- IPES)
1.
2.
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14 kilómetros (dvd)
<a href=”http://www.youtube.com/invisiblesfilms”>Los Invisibles</a> (by Garcia Bernal in colaboration with Amnesty International)
14 KILOMETRES
Directed by Gerardo Olivares
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4S-7UTmDFms[/youtube]
REVIEW
by Felipe Gómez Isa
Fourteen kilometers is the geographical distance between the African continent and the South of Europe. It is, however, more than that. It also serves as the insurmountable obstacle that negates the dreams of millions of African teenagers who see the Western world as their only hope to escape from hunger, misery, and despair. 14 Kilometres,a road movie, wisely combines fiction and documentary to explore the human dimensions (and, unfortunately, inhuman dimensions) of the dramatic adventure of Sub-Saharan African migration to Europe. This journey can last months or even years, and all too often the final destiny is death—either in the sands of the desert or in the dangerous waters of the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea.
The film 14 Kilometres is based on the story of Violeta Sunny, Buba Kanou, and Mukela Kanou, who represent an entire generation of African young people whose only desire is to migrate to Europe. Violeta escapes from a forced marriage with a much older man of her village and his repeated sexual abuse; Buba wants to be a football (soccer) star for one of the leading European teams, and he travels the entire way with a t-shirt of Real Madrid and a foot ball; and the third traveller is Mukela, Buba’s brother, who is responsible for convincing his brother to leave his village and make the journey but who ultimately dies in the harsh desert.
The three initiate their odyssey in Niger, crossing the Tenere and the Saharan deserts until they reach the Moroccan coast, where only two of them finally make it to their imagined “promised land.” In the course of their trip they face police corruption, the severity and cruelty of the desert, and unscrupulous human traffickers. However, they also experience the solidarity of the peoples of the desert, the Touareg. One of the culminating moments of the film is when a Touareg leader addresses Violeta and Buba with these words: “the future is here, in Africa.” This is one of the subliminal messages that the author wants to convey: migration is not the solution to the collective tragedy that the African continent is suffering. There are a number of remarkable aspects of this film. One is the stunning beauty of the cruel desert itself. Another is the film’s commitment to human beings and its capacity to illustrate the human suffering involved in the hard and extenuating migration process, a perspective that has not received much attention so far. As the Spanish writer Rosa Montero declares in the final scene of the movie: “They will keep coming and will keep dying, since history shows that there is no wall with the capacity to stop dreams.”
As a postscript, at the time of writing, May 2008, more than 1,200 Sub-Saharan migrants, including little children, are living in the surroundings of the Moroccan city of Oujda, fifteen kilometers away from the Algerian border, waiting for their opportunity to start their hazardous sojourn once again. They face extreme conditions, and survival depends on mutual solidarity and the support of NGOs. But, as a woman from Nigeria says, “I will try it again.” Highly recommended