Lament with Wings

I co-produced this documentary for Baylor Chapel a few years ago. https://vimeo.com/118193318

Here’s a summary by the film producer, Pilar Timpane:

Lamento con Alas (“Lament with Wings”) is a short documentary about good Samaritans Lavoyger Durham and Lori Baker who attempt to make a difference during the immigration surge in the summer of 2014. Durham breaks stereotypes as a Texan rancher who sets up water stations that keep immigrants alive even as they illegally cross his land. And Baker, an associate professor of anthropology at Baylor University, exhumes deceased immigrants from unmarked graves and works to return the dead to their families in Latin America. She founded the Reuniting Families Project to establish a system for DNA analysis and identification of these deceased migrants. Durham and Baker both work to bring dignity to migrants who cross our border in dangerous conditions.

Now, several ears later, the crisis at the border continues. This summer, immigration has surged again, with nearly 400,000 immigrants apprehended through August 2016. These numbers include families and unaccompanied children, most of whom are coming from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras and are trafficked through Mexico on their way to the US border. And as the rhetoric of the political season has demonstrated, Americans are deeply divided over how to handle Latin American and Middle Eastern immigrants—some cry that we should build a wall whereas others hope for clearer paths to citizenship.