The 13th annual film festival in the lefty little town of Carrboro NC came to a fitting end with this inspiring entry by Durham based director Rodrigo Dorfman, an immigrant from Chile and the son of writer Ariel Dorfman.The subject is Jose Torres-Tama, a New Orleans performance artist who has taught his two little boys to help him with his act, and one strand of this rich portrait is about parenting; how Jose instructs the boys to think more critically about the history they learn in school, for instance.To his credit, Torres-Tama as a Latino also cautions them not to think their Spanish ancestors and the French in Louisiana were any better than the Anglos who took over from them,as these Europeans were colonizers, slave traders and genocidal.Though he does transmit some of the Hispanic heritage, as in an amusing scene where the boys sing the Mexican standard Cielito Lindo off key.Besides the title reference to Woody Guthrie, the film riffs playfully in several scenes on Star Wars.Dorfman is to be commended for delivering a much needed message about immigration in the age of Trump, but for doing so in a highly creative way that spins off in different directions.
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