“The Bisbee Deportation Doesn’t Matter Unless it Relates to our Real Lives Today”: Robert Greene on Bisbee ’17

Sundance vet Robert Greene (Kate Plays Christine, Actress) returns to Park City this year with a film quite unlike his previous features, at least in subject matter if not approach. For Bisbee ’17 Greene turns his trademark technique of fusing fiction and nonfiction elements on the story of a sordid anniversary, the 1917 Bisbee Deportation, in which 1,200 immigrant miners in Bisbee, Arizona were rounded up, shipped out of the copper town on cattle cars and left to die in the desert. Through staged recreations developed and performed by local residents — including an actor whose mom was deported to Mexico when he was a child, and a woman whose ancestors include two brothers, one who deported the other — Greene takes a WWI-era tale pitting corporations against unions, capitalism against socialism, white “natives” against newcomers, and makes it unnervingly relevant to our present day.

Filmmaker caught up with Greene to discuss his cinematic history lesson a few days prior to the film’s premiere.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.