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Joseph Mathew and Dan DeVivo

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• "Crossing Arizona" — Screening and Talkback

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"Crossing Arizona"

A Rainlake film

In 1993 the United States began to seal its border with Mexico. People have been dying ever since.

Heightened security in California and Texas has pushed illegal border-crossers into the treacherous Arizona desert in unprecedented numbers — an estimated 4,500 a day. Most are men in search of work, but increasingly the border-crossers are women and children. This influx of migrants crossing through Arizona and the attendant rising death toll have elicited complicated feelings about human rights, culture, class, labor and national security.

"Crossing Arizona" examines the crisis through the eyes of those directly affected by it. Frustrated ranchers go out day after day to repair cut fences and pick up the trash that endangers their livestock and livelihoods. Humanitarian groups place water stations in the desert in an attempt to save lives. Political activists rally against anti-migrant ballot initiatives and try to counter rampant fear mongering. Farmers who depend on the illegal work force face each day with the fear that they may lose their workers to a border patrol sweep. And now there are the Minutemen, an armed citizen patrol group taking border security into their own hands. As up-to-date as the nightly news, but far more in-depth, "Crossing Arizona" reveals the surprising political stances people take when immigration and border policy fails everyone.

The Directors

Joseph Mathew
When he moved to the United States from India in 1994, Joseph Mathew left behind a background in finance and economics to pursue his lifelong dream of a career in photo and video journalism. After freelancing as a photojournalist for the AP's Baltimore bureau, Mathew took on the more challenging format of feature-length documentary filmmaking. He completed his first feature documentary, The Last Season: The Life & Demolition of Baltimore's Memorial Stadium, in 2002. "Crossing Arizona" is his second film.

Dan DeVivo, Director/Producer
After graduating from Harvard University in 1999 with a B.A. in Social Anthropology, Dan spent several years honing his documentary filmmaking skills in New York City working on several projects including, "Counting On Democracy," which documents Florida's 2000 election scandal and "Refusing To Die: A Kenyan Story," which chronicles Kenya's struggle with post-colonial dictatorship. In 2004, he partnered with Joseph Mathew to co-direct and produce "Crossing Arizona", which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January of 2006.

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