La Boda

By Hannah Weyer
Premiered: June 27, 2000

Elizabeth is marrying Artemio in Nuevo Leon, Mexico and you are cordially invited to the wedding. Meet these two young people from the U.S.-Mexican border region whose lives are framed by the challenges of migrant life. Through Elizabeth, we see a family and community continually on the move, keeping alive their roots in Mexico even as they incorporate American-style dreams and their often harsh realities. In this absorbing film, the wedding becomes a touching evocation of migrant life, girlhood, and the enduring strength of family tradition.

GO TO THE SPECIAL PBS WEB SITE

What's Your P.O.V.?
Share your comments about the issues raised by this film

Transcript:

Hannah Weyer, filmmaker: La Boda is a story about Elizabeth Luis, a Mexican American migrant farm worker and the days leading up to her wedding.

Elizabeth Luis: For me, being a migrant is going to California to go work for six months, coming to Texas, and live on a small budget.

Hannah Weyer: When I first met Elizabeth, she seemed completely connected to her community and she had this strong sense of belonging to her family, even though she lived this very transient life.

Elizabeth Luis: Most of migrants, we would work for our family. We work for our family.

Hannah Weyer: Elizabeth was going to be getting married.

Elizabeth Luis: I'm a little nervous. I don't know want what to do! Artemio 's family's outside cutting the meat. Everybody's doing something and I'm not doing anything!

Hannah Weyer: The wedding became sort of the centerpiece and the spring board that I was able to sort of hang details about Elizabeth and her family.

Elizabeth Luis: This house is gonna be swamped. We have to sleep like lizards!

Hannah Weyer: They have this very rich life that provides them with great hope and trust in the future.

Elizabeth Luis: Thank you for coming, everybody.

" ...Assembled with an intelligent eye...By the end, you feel that you've been somewhere, somewhere you could not have exactly predicted, and have been broadened in the way travel is supposed to broaden you...that you have seen something of how other people live, and how like it is the way you live, and very unlike. That it's a big old small world after all. Television really can't do much more for you. "
Robert Lloyd, LA Weekly

" ...An intimate and sympathetic portrait of a Mexican-American family. "
Julie Salamon, The New York Times

" La Boda is the kind of personal documentary that's harder and harder to find. It's also a brand of reality TV that acts as an antidote to the contrived "reality" of Survivor and its ilk. "
Manuel Mendoza, Dallas Morning News

PRESS RELEASE (requires Adobe Acrobat Reader)

PHOTOS
To view an image, click on a thumbnail below.

Please note: Photos are for press and private use only. All rights reserved. All uses of the photos must be credited as indicated below. For additional information on rights and clearance issues, contact povcomm@pov.org.

Credit: Robert Zash
Caption: Filmmaker Hannah Weyer

Credit: Hannah Weyer
Caption: Migrant workers

Credit: Hannah Weyer
Caption: Elizabeth Luis' parents

Credit: Aimee Studio, Reynosa
Caption: Elizabeth Luis and Artemio Guerrero

Credit: Jim McKay
Caption: Elizabeth Luis and her mother