This Friday’s film is “Diamond Box,” a doc by the artist and 2013 Genius Awards nominee Rodrigo Valenzuela. At the center of the black-and-white video are Mexican men Valenzuela hired not to work on a yard or lift boxes onto a truck but to tell their stories and be filmed hanging out in hotel rooms and other anonymous spaces. Their stories, which invariably describe the dangers/horrors of crossing the border and the relentless difficulties of living in a society with no rights and little idea of what the future holds (making enough money, falling sick with no health insurance, getting arrested and deported) are, of course, bleak. The men sit and look at the camera or sit and look at each other with the stunned curiosity of a person who has been unexpectedly displaced from the constant storms and stresses of the real world. This sudden peace seems so strange to them.
If you have a short, send it to charles@thestranger.com. That’s what Scott Blake did earlier this year, and look what happened to him.
