Border Witness

Michael Dear is author of Why Walls Won't Work and other works on border urbanism, Latinx culture in Los Angeles, and the urban humanities. He is a critic and curator, most recently of Califas: Art of the US-Mexico Borderlands.

• Introduction   Part 1 Origins1. Border Witness: From the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico   2. Bisected Bodies: Early Silent Films3. Making Filmscapes  4. Using Film as Evidence5. Revolution and Modernization6. The Great Migrations7. Border Film NoirPart 2 Fusions8. Borderlands before Borders9. From Final Girl to Woman Warrior10. Narco Nations: Men at War 11. Lives of the Undocumented12. Moral Tales, Border Law 13. Border Walls: Screen Folly and Fantasy 14. The Mexican Dream/El Sueño MexicanoPart 3 Witness15. A Golden Age for Border Film16. Ways of Seeing the Border (Beyond Film)17. Border Witness of the FutureAcknowledgmentsAppendix 1: Chronological FilmographyAppendix 2: Alphabetical FilmographyAppendix 3: Map of US-Mexico BorderlandsNotesReferencesIndex

"Dear’s book is a magnificent chronicle of borderlands films over a century that should be a “must-read” for border scholars and perhaps used not only in film classes but also in border studies courses to supplement the often-dry readings assigned in our twenty-first century visual world."