Sin Nombre
How can we understand the experiences of people whose lives have become radically displaced or deterritorialized?In this lecture, Professor Ricardo Ortiz discusses displacement in the film Sin Nombre.
Fables of De-Patriation: Undocumented Others in Cary Fukunaga’s Sin Nombre
Ricardo Ortiz
Wednesday March 25, 2014, 3 p.m.
Battelle-Tompkins 228
About our speaker
Ricardo Ortiz is associate professor of US Latino Literature and Culture at Georgetown University. His work focuses on hemispheric, transnational “Américas” Studies, cultural studies, and race, gender and queer theory. For this talk, he discusses the representation of migration and violence in the film Sin Nombre (Cary Fukunaga, 2009), which follows illegal immigrants and escaping gang members on the dangerous train journey from Honduras, through Mexico, to the United States. Combining fictional and documentary elements, and filming in real locations with real people, the film becomes an emotional testament of migration and displacement. A film screening will be scheduled for early March.
Sin Nombre
Sin Nombre is a film directed by Cary Fukunaga, featuring the character(s) Sayra (Paulina Gaitan), a Honduran teen, hungers for a better life. Her chance for one comes when she is reunited with her long-estranged father, who intends to emigrate to Mexico and then enter the United States. Sayra’s life collides with a pair of Mexican gangmembers (Edgar Flores, Kristyan Ferrer) who have boarded the same American-bound train.
