FILMS/
SLEEP DEALER
New Directors
USA/Mexico, 2008, 90 minutes
SHOWTIMES
Mon, Apr 28 / 9:00 / PFA / SLEE28P
Sun, May 4 / 9:15 / Kabuki / SLEE04K
Wed, May 7 / 6:15 / Kabuki / SLEE07K
CREDITS
- dir
-
Alex Rivera
- prod
-
Anthony Bregman
- scr
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Alex Rivera, David Riker
- cam
-
Lisa Rinzler
- editor
-
Alex Rivera
- mus
-
Tomandandy
- cast
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Luis Fernando Peña, Leonor Varela, Jacob Vargas, Giovanna Zacarías
- source
-
Likely Story, 161 Sixth Ave, 11th Floor, Rm S02, New York, NY 10013. FAX: 212 627 1684. EMAIL: jb@likely-story.com
In a near-future world not far different from today, a young resident of a remote Mexican village named Memo Cruz (Luis Fernando Peña) taps into a security network where officials are discussing the problem of “Aqua Terrorism.” The catastrophic fallout from this eavesdropping forces him to leave town for Tijuana, where he joins an underground society of workers whose jobs are done virtually, through nodes implanted in the upper body. This work carries a heavy price, however, as these laborers slowly go blind from the goggles they wear in order to “commute.” In desperate need of cash for himself and to send home, Memo gets a “node job” thanks to a mysterious woman he meets named Luz (Leonor Varela). Meanwhile, Luz begins to record and store her memories of Memo, and the events that transpired in his hometown begin to catch up with him. This plot outline should make it clear that digital media artist Rivera’s first feature is ambitious, ingenious and extremely topical. Issues of labor outsourcing, memory cooptation and water scarcity mingle with the dystopian science fiction parables of Huxley and Orwell and the way-out visions of The Matrix or eXistenZ. The film’s imagery is vibrant and trippy, demonstrating that nifty visual effects do not need a multimillion-dollar budget. And through its focus on characters who are not privileged and not English speaking, Sleep Dealer makes the point that these are the people on whom the future and all of its perils will weigh the hardest.
—Rod Armstrong
In Spanish with English subtitles. New Directors Prize contender. West Coast Premiere. Sponsored by Alice @ 97.3 Radio.
