Filmmaker hopes to shed light on drug war’s innocent victims

Fri Apr 13, 2012.
By Y.C. Orozco
According to the Mexican government, as of January 2012, 47,515 people had been killed in drug-related violence, since President Felipe Calderón issued a military assault on criminal cartels soon after taking office in late 2006.
Ciudad Juarez, just south of El Paso, has become the bloody centerpiece in the Mexican drug war that erupted after President Felipe Calderon officially sent federal troops to dismantle the drug cartels.
Juarez has been called one of the most dangerous cities outside of declared war zones.
But even as the homicide rate continues to rise and even as news reports paint Mexico as a simmering pot of violence and chaos, the human tragedy remains relatively under the radar.
Charlie Minn, an independent filmmaker from New York, wants his new film to shed light on the human tragedy of the drug war and put it on the map of public consciousness, especially in the United States.
Independently produced and financed, The Murder Capital of the World, will begin a week-long run at Cinema Latino in Pasadena this Friday.
“The film examines, in my opinion, the greatest human rights disaster in the world today,” Minn said in a telephone interview from Manhattan. “It’s happening in the entire country (Mexico), but Juarez has become the symbol of the violence and the epicenter.”
In the fall of 2009, Minn was filming another documentary in Las Cruzes, New Mexico, forty miles from Juarez just as the Mexican drug wars were exploding out of control.
“Everything just fit right for me to stay there and make a film,” Minn said. “I’m a victim-driven documentarian.”
It was that aspect of the drug war that led Minn to film his latest documentary, Murder Capital of the World, City Under Siege.
This is Minn’s second film on the drug wars and will be screened in New York and L.A. the same week it debuts in Pasadena.
The film openly criticizes what he perceives as inaction on the part of the Obama administration, and challenges what he perceives as general American apathy toward its neighbors to the south.
“U.S. interest tends to be Middle Eastern-driven, not that that is not important, but we border Mexico, there is no body of water separating us,” Minn said.
Some of that disinterest, Minn believes, is cultural. The United States is the largest consumer of illegal drugs in the world, he says, and so the political and social implications of the drug wars is either too close to home or too complex to approach for most Americans.
“We tend to look the other way,” he said. “You can make the argument that there is an attitude of ‘It’s happening there and not here’ – the bottom line is that it’s not talked about.”
Reports of dismembered bodies and execution-style slayings have defined Juarez in the public’s mind for years and Minn said he made his film to highlight what it means and how it impacts the U.S.
“It has greater impact than people realize,” Minn said. “Many have fled to the U.S. for a better life and a lot of people living along the border In Hispanic communities that have friends and family in Mexico. I know they constantly worry about them.”
It’s that familial connection - between many in the U.S. and Mexico - that Minn hopes to illuminate. The innocent victims caught in the crossfire could be anyone’s aunt, uncle, distant or close relative, or child.
“They could be the victim of wrong-place-wrong-time, they could be in the middle of a shoot out and they had nothing to do with it,” he said. “The innocent victims are the ones who have been brutally cheated the most. Once you get kids into the equation - that takes the crime beyond levels beyond comprehension.”
Minn relays the report of a young girl shot in the eye in Juarez several weeks ago.
“When you see things like that - if that doesn’t hit home… what will?”
The Murder Capital of the World will begin its week-long engagement Friday April 20th at Cinema Latino in Pasadena at 2233 Southmore. For more information on show times call Cinema Latino at 713-477-2888.
Source http://www.yourhoustonnews.com/deer_park/news/filmmaker-hopes-to-shed-light-on-drug-war-s-innocent/article_e47a7180-8578-11e1-9100-001a4bcf887a.html

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