ALAN SEKULA::::
born 1951 in Erie, PA
Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA

Sekula is a photographer, filmmaker, writer, and critic who is a pioneer in reworking “social realism” for what he calls ‘critical realism.’ People engaged in economic and political struggles are frequent subjects, and he uses photography as a means of portraying globalization. Through his works he explores the structures of global economic systems in specific locations and conditions. sekula’s work focuses on the poor and marginalized who have become dispossessed by globalization. “Any interest i had in artifice and constructed dialogue was part of a certain search for realism, a realism not of appearances or social facts but of everyday experience in and against the grip of advanced capitalism.”

In this new film Sekula has traced and documented the evolution of the worker’s production conditions in Laos today, witnessing the effects of the war with the US in the 1970s. Fred Branfman’s book Voices From the Plain of Jars, which Sekula read during the war, is about the American campaign to make laos the “most bombed country on earth,” and thus a laboratory for imperial strategies both criminal and ineffective. Sekula visits Laos to witness these conditions.