Juarez Murders - Bordertown

Last night we watched the movie Bordertown. The movie is about a reporter who is assigned to investigate and write about the on-going and mostly unsolved murders of young women in and around Juarez just across the border from El Paso. Most of the women work for very little money in the maquiladoras along the border and most of them have been abducted either on their way to or from work. It is one of those stories based on real events but it is a fictional story.

What interested me as much as the storyline was the cinematography. The director Gregory Nava used the garish colors of light to bring an edge to the story. In the factory it was green. In the street at night it was yellow and magenta. In daylight it was brilliant, blasting, over saturated light. In the night it was black with few details emerging. I also like the way he flattened the space in the city so that things looked even more crowded. It made you feel that you were in the midst of the traffic and pedestrians, being carried along with the flow. And all of this emphasized the filth and living conditions of the peasants along the border. If you are a photographer rent this movie and see if you don't learn something that you might want to use sometime in your photography.

If you want to learn more about the murders in Juarez you might want to click here and here.