http://www2.townonline.com/beverly/arts ... eid=345815

Film blows lid off illegal immigration caldron
By Dan Mac Alpine/ BEVERLY@CNC.COM
Thursday, October 13, 2005

Jeremy Levine, BHS Class of 2002, has opinions.

Opinions on U.S. drug laws. Views on immigration policy. Ideas on the fact 1,500 illegal immigrants pour through the Tohono O'odan Nation reservation in Arizona from Mexico every day. He his own take on the fact some 3,000 illegal immigrants have died of exposure trying to reach America, mostly in the Sonora desert, since 1993 when U.S. immigration shut down major urban routes into the U.S.

Levine has his opinions.

It's just none of these opinions show up in his award-winning documentary, "Walking the Line," an hour-long film he made with fellow Ithaca College film student, Landon Van Soest.

"That was part of the thesis of the film, to try and stay away from a Michael Moore, beating-you-over-the-head documentary," said Levine. "We had a point, but as we went along, it wasn't clear what it would eventually be. We started from the viewpoint of, 'Look at these crazy guys with guns.' We realized vigilantes aren't the problem, but the result of border policy. I wish we'd come up with some magic solution, but that may be beyond two college students."

For the record, Levine thinks a guest-worker program might be a step in the right direction.

Instead of loading up on heavy-handed opinion, Levine and Van Soest let everyone else have their say: The vigilante border groups; Chicano activists; humanitarian volunteers; politicians and a rancher who came under an AK-47 barrage from Mexican drug traffickers as he stood in his kitchen - he drove them off with his own rifle shots.

The result is a film rich in complexity and stark in presentation that brings a sprawling and largely ignored issue into tight focus - an effort that won Best Humanitarian Documentary honors at the Ohne Kohle International Film Festival in Germany and Austria this summer.

The film takes the viewer on night patrols with untrained vigilantes as they crawl through desert underbrush togged in camouflage, faces blackened, their assault rifles loaded and ready. It shows face-to-face confrontations between the armed U.S. civilians and the Mexican military. It follows Mike Wilson as he drops jugs of water off on a desert roadside for migrants and shows him tending a migrant worker stranded in the desert, abandoned by his group because of blistered and bloodied feet. The film brings home the blackened, tongue-swollen face of an immigrant whom Wilson didn't find and died of exposure on the route to the U.S.

The footage brought Levine and Van Soest right into the caldron of boiling emotions, propaganda, untrained and armed groups on both sides of the border and very real dangers.

Certainly, crouching and crawling around on patrol with 20 or so untrained civilians dressed and armed as if they were a few squads of U.S. infantry can't engender a great deal of confidence - one nervous trigger finger, confused and tense and ....

Jack Foote and Casey Nethercott, leaders of the vigilante group Ranch Rescue, capitalized on the dangers, telling the college students they couldn't guarantee their safety nor would they even be able to assure their "relative safety" as Levine said.

Some of the danger was real. Scorpions in the desert. The possibility of running into armed drug smugglers. Some of it was exaggerated or merely part of the mystique the group created.

"They got a kick out of bullying us and frightening us," said Levine. "They told us it wasn't safe. That we should go to a certain motel and then call them and someone would pick us up. When we got down there they just gave us directions."

One evening, Van Soest went on patrol with Foote and Levine stayed behind with Nethercott.

"He started quoting Hannibal Lecter," recalled Levine. "He pulled out a long serrated knife and asked, 'Do you want your innards in or out?' I spent the night with his Rottweiler attack dog, with him screaming at the dog not to attack me and at me not be afraid. And then he left the room. It was just me and the dog. I spent 45 minutes with the dog walking around me in circles and me on a chair. I was glad to get out of there."

At the same time, Levine admitted to a surprising affinity with aspects of the patrols.

"It makes you feel very important to be running around. We had a common bond in finding immigrants because that would be good footage for us. It was kind of sick. Then we found a group and it was tough to stick cameras in their faces. Was it scary? Yes. Some of these guys don't seem completely there."

Levine found sanity for his own experience and for the film from an unexpected source: Richard Kozak, the Arizona ranch owner whose trailer was shot up by drug smugglers.

"He was all over the vigilante Web sites," said Levine. "We just drove up to his ranch and we were scared. We talked to him and realized this guy is completely opposed to taking up guns. When it becomes self-defense, that's always OK. When you have drug smugglers crossing your land, that's a legitimate concern. He comes across as one of the most reasonable people in the film."

"There is not a violent solution," says Kozak near the end of "Walking the Line." "The answers are economic, not criminal."

If you go

What: Screening of documentary Walking the Line

Who: Beverly film maker, Jeremy Levine

Where: Latino International Film Festival,

Harvard Film Archives, 24 Quincy Street, Cambridge

When: Oct. 16

Time: 9:50 p.m.