Editor

Wednesday, October 26 - Co-creators Laura Poitras, AJ Schnack and Charlotte Cook are proud to present the next film in Field of Vision, BEST OF LUCK WITH THE WALL by data artist and web developer Josh Begley, which gives an hypnotic visual reality to one of the most difficult concepts of this year's election - the enormity of the U.S. border with Mexico. 

BEST OF LUCK WITH THE WALL (Dir. Josh Begley)

What does the Southern Border of the United States look like? For all the talk of "securing the border" and "building a wall," there is surprisingly little visual material about just how vast this stretch of space is. In total, the U.S.-Mexico border spans 1,954 miles. According to Google Maps, it would take some 34 hours to drive the entire length. In some places, there already is a border fence-more than 650 miles of it. Pushed and pulled by various forces, some 1 million people are estimated to pass through the official ports of entry every day. But what does the geography of this landscape look like? Is it industrial? Desolate? Populated? All of the above? Using the geographic coordinates of the international boundary line, Josh Begley wrote a small computer script to download satellite imagery for the entire stretch of space, ending up with about 200,000 images. In BEST OF LUCK WITH THE WALL, Begley programmatically stitches these images into a short film, scored by artist Jace Clayton. By focusing on the physical landscape, Begley gives viewers a sense of the enormity of it all, and helps us imagine what it would mean to be a political subject of that terrain. 

Watch the film at the Field of Vision site: http://www.fieldofvision.org

STILLS: HERE

About Josh Begley

Josh Begley (b. 1984) is a data artist and web developer based in Brooklyn, New York. He is the creator of Metadata+, an iPhone app that tracks U.S. drone strikes. Appropriating publicly available satellite imagery, Begley's work takes advantage of application programming interfaces, or APIs, to build collections of machine-generated images about quotidian life. His work has appeared in Wired, The New York Times,

NPR, The Atlantic, The Guardian, New York Magazine, and at the New Museum of Contemporary Art. Begley holds degrees from the University of California, Berkeley and New York University. He currently works at The Intercept, a publication of First Look Media.

HEADSHOT: HERE

About Field of Vision:

Field of Vision was launched in September 2015 at the New York Film Festival.  Co-created by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Laura Poitras, filmmaker AJ Schnack and curator & producer Charlotte Cook, Field of Vision has commissioned 22 stand-alone nonfiction short films, 3 episodic series and 2 feature-length documentaries in its first year. 

Work created by Field of Vision has been featured at major international film festivals, including Sundance, Cannes, SXSW and Rotterdam and has received a number of Grand Jury Prizes for Short Documentary, as well as a News and Documentary Emmy nomination. Three Field of Vision films have been shortlisted for the 2017 Cinema Eye Outstanding Nonfiction Short Film Honor. In addition, Field of Vision won the Webby Award for Online Film & Video - News & Politics: Series.

Laura Poitras [Co-Creator] is a filmmaker and journalist. Her film CITIZENFOUR won an Oscar for best documentary, as well as awards from BAFTA, Independent Spirit Awards, and the Director's Guild of America. The first film in her post-9/11 trilogy, My Country, My Country, was nominated for an Oscar. The second film, The Oath, was nominated for two Emmys. Her reporting on NSA surveillance received the George Polk Award for National Security journalism, and shared in the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for public service. She recently exhibited her first solo museum show at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

AJ Schnack [Co-Creator] is a nonfiction filmmaker. His work includes Speaking is Difficult (2016), Caucus (2013), We Always Lie To Strangers (2013), Convention(2009), Kurt Cobain: About A Son (2006) and Gigantic (A Tale of Two Johns) (2002). He has created episodic series on American electoral politics for Vanity Fair (Nomination, 2016), Fusion (Primaries, 2016) and Al Jazeera America (Midterms, 2014). He is the Founding Director of the Cinema Eye Honors for Nonfiction Filmmaking and a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism

Charlotte Cook[Co-Creator] is a curator, writer and producer. Prior to Field of Vision, she was the Director of Programming at Hot Docs, North America's largest documentary festival. In London, Charlotte was the Head of Film Programming at The Frontline Club. She has also worked with BBC Storyville, the Channel 4 BritDoc Foundation's Puma Creative Catalyst Fund and the Edinburgh International Film Festival, where she curated the strand Conflict | Reportage. In addition to her work at Field of Vision, Charlotte is currently a programmer at CPH:DOX.

About First Look Media

First Look Media is a new-model media company devoted to supporting independent voices across all platforms, from fearless investigative journalism and documentary filmmaking to smart, provocative entertainment. Launched in 2013 by eBay founder and philanthropist Pierre Omidyar, First Look operates as both a studio and digital media company.