Film Screening:

Sleep Dealer 

(Alex Rivera, 2008, 90 min, USA/Mexico, in Spanish w/ English subtitles & English, Color, Blu-Ray)

 -- Introduced by Jaime Gonzalez, Program in Literature! 

Sleep Dealer is a science fiction story set in a near-future, militarized world marked by closed borders, virtual labor and a global digital network that joins minds and experiences. The film unfolds largely in Mexico, where private corporations control the nation's water supply. With their employment options literally drying up back home, many rural workers make their way to big cities like Tijuana, where they are fitted with "nodes" that allow them to plug their nervous systems directly into the World Wide Web. Once connected to the Net, they are able to earn some money by working in factories where they build skyscrapers, care for infants and tend to gardens all without crossing the border. Their bodies remain in Mexico as their consciousnesses are downloaded into millions of robots that now perform the majority of America's manual labor.

-- Sleep Dealer won the Alfred P. Sloan Prize at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, where festival director Geoffrey Gilmore described it as "a combination of The Matrix, Blade Runner and The Border."

Cost: Free and open to the public.

Sponsors: The Program in the Arts of the Moving Image (AMI)