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Stranger Comes to Town

Jacqueline Goss

2007 00:28:30 United StatesEnglishColorStereo4:3

Description

They say there are only two stories in the world: man goes on a journey, and stranger comes to town.

Six people are interviewed anonymously about their experiences coming into the U.S. Each then designs a video game avatar who tells their story by proxy. Goss focuses on the questions and examinations used to establish identity at the border, and how these processes in turn affect one's own sense of self and view of the world.

Stranger Comes to Town re-works animations from the Department of Homeland Security--combining them with stories from the border, impressions from the on-line game "World of Warcraft," and journeys via Google Earth to tell a tale of bodies moving through lands familiar and strange. 

About Jacqueline Goss

Jacqueline Goss makes movies and web-based works that explore how political, cultural, and scientific systems change the ways we think about ourselves. For the last few years she has used 2D digital animation techniques to work within the genre of the animated documentary.  Her last film was "The Observers" -- a portrait of the summit of Mount Washington, NH: home to the highest human-recorded wind speed and one of the oldest weather observatories in the western hemisphere. She lives in the Hudson Valley and teaches at Bard College.