Film

Border Brujo

Director

Isaac Artenstein

Year

1990

Border Brujo is a ritual-linguistic journey across the U.S./Mexico border written and performed by artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña. In the guise of a cross-cultural shaman, Gómez Peña shifts into 15 different personas, each speaking a different language. The personas are symbolic of the borders between North and South, Anglo and Latino; myth and reality; legality and illegality; art and life. Border Brujo assaults and exorcises the demons of dominant cultures. He articulates fear, desire, trauma sublimation, anger and misplacement embodying ruptured and defiant communities with multilingual dexterity and humor.