Hobart and William Smith Colleges

13 September 2013 Latin American Stories Focus of Film Event

The Office of Intercultural Affairs will host acclaimed film producer and director Eduardo Lpez on Wednesday, Sept. 18 for a screening and discussion of his latest documentary film, Harvest of Empire: The Untold Story of Latinos in America. The on-campus event will be held at7 p.m. in the Vandervort Room of the Scandling Campus Center.

The event is cosponsored by Latin American Studies and Spanish and Hispanic Studies. Following the event, a reception hosted by the Latin American Student organization will be held.

This feature-length film is based on the revolutionary book, Harvest of Empire, written by award-winning journalist and Democracy Now! co-host Juan Gonzlez. The documentary features real-life stories and serves to explore the links between migration from Latin America and U.S. foreign policy. Through thedocumenting of political events, social conditions and action taken by the U.S. government, the film also focuses on the issues of immigration that have occurred over the past six decades and continue today.

At a time of heated debate over federal immigration policy, Lpez and co-producer Wendy Thompson-Marquez felt that a documentary film could offer a perspective on the huge sacrifices and rarely noted triumphs of the millions of Latino immigrants who are transforming the cultural and economic landscape of the United States.

The film features interviews with Nobel Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu, Jesse Jackson, Executive Director of the ACLU Anthony Romero, Junot Daz, Lorenzo Meyer, Maria Hinojosa, Geraldo Rivera, musician Luis Enrique, and poet Martin Espada.

Born in El Salvador, Lpez has eight films to his credit, with Harvest of Empire being his most critically acclaimed. The film has won the coveted Imagen Award for Best Documentary Feature in the recently held Imagen Awards ceremony in Los Angeles. The awards program celebrates media productions created by or about Latinos in the United States. It also received the ABC News VideoSource Award, an honor that annually recognizes the best use of news footage as an integral component in a documentary.