"The film is a collage of found footage, and documentary images, radio Spanish/English tracks and commentary by Philippe Bourgois, a Stanford Anthropologist trapped in an offensive by U.S -backed Salvadoran Military forces. The film's position against US intervention in the third world is stated in graphic visuals that employ techniques of optical printing and animation." -- David Heintz

"In Across the Border, filmmaker Dana Plays expresses her lifelong commitment to the culture of Latin America. More specifically, her film offers the viewer an unusual insight into the complex relationship between the people of El Salvador and the United States government. Completed in 1982, during a period in which many American artists were trying to convey their anger with their own country's politics. Across the Border transcends the conventions of social documentary as we have come to know it through public television. Instead, Plays manipulates visual elements that compose the image through coloring and fragmentation. She uses this process of deconstruction to lead to a greater understanding of those "man-made" constructs that are responsible for the oppression she has witnessed. But Plays' message is hardly dogmatic. The subtlety of her collage-like style suggests a very open message, giving the viewer the opportunity to enter the work as a thinking human being rather than a receptacle of one person's point of view. Dana Plays' personal involvement with the people of El Salvador follows in the tradition of a cross cultural awareness expressed by other women filmmakers such as Maya Deren (Haiti), Margaret Meed (Bali, New Guinea) and Chick Strand (Mexico)." -- Lynne Sachs

Awards:

First Prize Experimental Santa Fe Winter Film Expo
Bronze Award, Houston International Film Festival,
First Prize Experimental Universiade International Film Festival
Cash Award, Ann Arbor Film Festival
Cash Award, San Francisco Art Institute Film Festival

Screenings:

Whitney Museum of American Art
Edinburgh International Film Festival
San Francisco Cinematheque
Women in the Director's Chair Festival
Baltimore International Film Festival
Anti-WW III Festival
SF Bay Area Showcase, SF International Film Festival,
Pushing the Margins, Women in Experimental Film, Salt Lake City Utah Women of the Americas Film Video East Meets West
A.T.A., Other Cinema
Women's Film Festival
Festival of International and Progressive Film and Video, U.C Theatre, Berkeley, California
Pacific Film Archive
KQED Frontal Exposure
WTTW Chicago