Sci-Fi-ing Immigration and the U.S.-Mexico Border: An Interview with Filmmaker Alex Rivera

Alex Rivera’s first feature length film, Sleep Dealer, was released theatrically in 2008 in over thirty cities across the United States. Audiences were introduced to a futuristic vision of society that today, just seven years later, is not some far-fetched dreamscape but an uncanny depiction of the present. Rivera’s science fiction film depicts the future as a place where borders are closed and militarized, and where drones and elaborate forms of surveillance protect against the threat of aqua-terrorists. Workers remotely perform labor in distant lands—in the U.S., Europe, and other so-called first world countries—by connecting themselves to a global digital network. In his radical and groundbreaking film, Rivera invites viewers to consider the complexities of globalization and technology, and the roles they play in exploiting and oppressing immigrants.

Debates concerning immigration and the U.S.-Mexico border are nothing new, especially in our post-9/11 society. The 2016 presidential race has prompted renewed calls to fight terrorism, both foreign and domestic, and to curtail or prevent undocumented immigration. The presumptive Republican nominee, Donald Trump, talks of militarizing the U.S.-Mexico border (as if the Department of Homeland Security had not already done so) and building a Great Wall there at Mexico’s expense. This discourse resembles something akin to a Hollywood science fiction film, like Roland Emmerich’s 1996 hit, Independence Day, in which aliens invade the U.S. and seek to destroy all things American. However, unlike Independence Day or, for that matter, Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982) or Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report (2002), Sleep Dealer resonates with the present and future by engaging the varied experiences of Latina/o communities, human movement or restriction, labor, race, and technology in the age of globalization.

Figure 1.

The baseball stadium of Boquerón, Mexico, was paid for entirely by people from the town who live and work in upstate New York. “New York” is painted next to the name of the town entrance. Photo by Rodolfo Valtierra during the filming of The Sixth Section (2003). Courtesy of Alex Rivera.

A digital media artist based in New York, Rivera has always engaged these issues. In his first film, Papapapá (1995), Rivera combines elements of surrealism, animation, and documentary techniques to explore the Peruvian origins of the potato, and his father. This whimsical film investigates immigration and uses the concept of “virtual reality” and information technologies as a platform to represent the “third reality” that his dad inhabits. Rivera’s second and fourth films, Animaquiladora/Why Cybraceros? (1997) and The Sixth Section (2003), respectively, continue the trajectory of exploring the impacts of technology on labor and immigration. Rivera’s ingenious use of audio and visual landscapes makes discussions of complex issues accessible to the public. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in Sleep Dealer, with its sci-fi-ing of immigration and the border. His innovative deployment of science fiction encourages us to question our present reality, by projecting into the future. What our future will look like depends directly on who “we” are; the future can entail a utopia, a dystopia, or both.

Rivera’s works have appeared in numerous national and international film festivals, which include the San Francisco International Film Festival, the American Film Institute (AFI) Latin American Film Festival, the Los Angeles International Latino Film Festival, the New York International Latino Film Festival, and screenings at the Guggenheim Museum, The Museum of Modern Art, and the Lincoln Center. He is also the recipient of fellowships from the Sundance Institute and the Rockefeller Foundation, as well as of grants from USA Artists, the MacArthur Foundation, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Among the various awards Sleep Dealer has won are: a Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award and the Alfred P. Sloan Award, both at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival; the Amnesty International Award at the 2008 Berlin International Film Festival; and the Best of Festival at the 2008 Neuchatel International Fantasy Film Festival.

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