De l'Autre Côté is the concluding chapter in Chantal Akerman’s documentary triptych observing the complexities of identity and political injustice. As in the two earlier works, D’Est (1993) and Sud (1999), De l'Autre Côté combines sensitive portraiture, a fecund sense of curiosity, and a rhetorical approach whose questions serve to illuminate grave violations ripe for remediation (a similar, sneaky use of candour can be found in much of Agnès Varda’s non-fiction work). An investigation of the plight of illegal Mexican immigrants who attempt a perilous journey across the US border, the film dissects the harsh economic realities which motivate migrants to tackle the infamous running fence, as well as “the hypocrisy and paranoia involved in US immigration policy and its failure to acknowledge the economic dependence of the US on undocumented laborers” (Amy Taubin, Film Comment). While some American critics have likened the film to the photography of Walker Evans, Akerman’s formal consideration for the chain-link palisade recalls another poetic interpretation: Canadian photographer Geoffrey James’s celebrated “Running Fence” series. Akerman’s film and James’s photographs render the poetics of a contested site, an inauspicious symbol where hope meets loss.
Chantal Akerman: "Something haunted in me in the few lines I read about ranchers in Arizona who have decided to take the law into their own hands and who, in total impunity, with rifles and even magnums hunt the illegal immigrants that literally come tumbling out of the desert mountains into their properties. They hunt them, corral them, and hold them at gunpoint until the Border Patrol come to put them on file and take them back to the other side of the Mexican border. (...) If I felt the need to film a subject over there (North America) that we can read about or witness almost daily through similar events in Europe it is because over there it is more visible due the the distance, and especially to the situation's archaism, crudeness, and the violence of its almost incestuous relations."
De l'autre c-t- (Chantal Akerman, 2002).Eng subs.CiNEMAGROTESQUE.avi 
Spanish with English subs.
Coming from my collection but ripped and shared by 3p and cinemagrotesque group!
:plas:
