Mississippi Chicken
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Nominated for a Gotham Award for “Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You,” Mississippi Chicken captures the drama of life for Latin American immigrants with lyrical intimacy. Shot on Super 8mm, the film has a lustrous, saturated look that evokes a distinctive mood and texture. Set in a trailer park next to a poultry plant, the story focuses on Guillermina, who immigrated from Vera Cruz, Mexico. She cooks traditional Mexican meals in her trailer, providing a comforting home away from home for immigrant poultry workers, while struggling to keep her teenage daughter safe and navigate life in rural Mississippi. The film screened at festivals, universities, conferences, worker centers, and other community spaces around the U.S. and Mexico, including Miami International Film Festival, Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, Austin Film Festival, H.B.O. New York International Latino Film Festival, UNESCO’s Fórum Universal de las Culturas Monterrey, and Museum of Modern Art.
Mississippi Chicken - Full Film
82 min., 2007
"A scathing documentary about the plight of immigrant laborers recruited to the South to work in poultry factories...Mississippi Chicken is a wrenching look at what it's like at the bottom of the labor food chain. Shot on 8mm, the film has a gorgeous, saturated, old home-movie look that brings the heat of the southern summer to life on screen."- Kim Voynar, IndieWIRE
Film Festival Screenings
Justice Film Festival, Baylor University, 2010
Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, 2008
New Orleans International Human Rights Film Festival, 2008
Oxford Film Festival, 2008
African Diaspora Film Festival (NYC), 2007
Austin Film Festival, 2007
Providence Latin American Film Festival, 2007
H.B.O. New York International Latino Film Festival, 2007
Miami International Film Festival, 2007
Special Screenings
Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity & Dept. of Anthropology, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, 2010
Su Casa & Cincinnati Interfaith Workers’ Center, Cincinnati, OH, 2010
Lutheran Ethics of Eating Leadership Training, Waco, TX, 2009
Tulane University Law School with La Alianza del Derecho and Student Animal Legal Defense Fund, for Human Rights Film Week, New Orleans, LA, 2009
Poultry People Power, UNC Chapel Hill, 2009
Economic Justice Coalition Labor Day Celebration, Athens, GA, 2008
Labor Notes Conference, Detroit, MI, 2008
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2008
Fórum Universal de las Culturas Monterrey (UNESCO), 2007
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), NYC, 2007
Make The Road By Walking, NYC, 2007
SEIU 32BJ Auditorium, NYC, 2007
Center for Community Change Staff Retreat, Miami, 2007
Miami Dade College, Homestead Campus, 2007