Private Project

Crossing Columbus

History haunts the border town of Columbus, N.M. when riders on horseback drive north to commemorate Pancho Villa’s 1916 raid. This year, Villa's grandson delivers his grandfather's death mask as a symbol of binational friendship.

  • Cathy Lee Crane
    Director
    The Manhattan Front, Pasolini's Last Words
  • Heather Winters
    Producer
    Super Size Me, The Rest I Make Up
  • Tijana Petrovic
    Crew
    Director of Photography (US)
  • Cory Dahn
    Crew
    Director of Photography (Mexico)
  • Daniel Masciari
    POST-PRODUCTION
    Editor
  • Jeremiah Moore
    POST-PRODUCTION
    Sound Designer
  • Beth Custer
    POST-PRODUCTION
    Lead Composer
  • Project Type:
    Documentary, Feature
  • Genres:
    History, Borders, Hybrid
  • Runtime:
    1 hour 18 minutes
  • Completion Date:
    January 21, 2022
  • Production Budget:
    725,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    Mexico, United States
  • Language:
    English, Spanish
  • Shooting Format:
    HD
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Black & White and Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Ashland Independent Film Festival: Sneak Preview
    Virtual
    United States
    May 28, 2020
    Sneak Preview: Migrations Series
  • Cine con Cultura Latinx American Film Festival (on-line)
    Ithaca, NY
    United States
    October 6, 2020
  • Glimmerglass Film Days : Road Less Traveled (on-line)
    Cooperstown, New York
    United States
    November 6, 2020
  • National Gallery of Art: Saving the Filmmaking Arts (on-line)
    Washington, D.C.
    United States
    February 10, 2021
  • Tucson Film & Music Festival
    Tucson, Arizona
    United States
    October 2, 2021
    World Theatrical
  • Syracuse International Film Festival
    Syracuse, NY
    United States
    October 23, 2021
    Award: Best Documentary Feature
  • Arsenal Film Institute
    Berlin
    Germany
    July 29, 2022
    European
Distribution Information
  • polyvinyl films
    Distributor
    Country: Worldwide
    Rights: All Rights
Director Biography - Cathy Lee Crane

Cathy Lee CRANE has been charting a speculative history on film since 1994. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the New York Foundation for the Arts as well as grants from the New York State Council on the Arts and the San Francisco Arts Commission. Her award-winning films (which include the experimental biographies Pasolini’s Last Words and Unoccupied Zone: The Impossible Life of Simone Weil) have screened at the Viennale, San Francisco International Film Festival, Festival du Nouveau Cinema, Cinematheque Francais, BFI, and Arsenal/Berlin. Her first full-length hybrid fiction film The Manhattan Front (2018) premiered at SFIndieFest (www.themanhattanfront.com/press). In a quarter century of filmmaking, she has also served as director of photography for many artists including for Harun Farocki’s groundbreaking Prison Images (2000) . Her body of work received its first survey in 2015 as part of the American Original Now series at the National Gallery of Art. Crossing Columbus was made possible through research fellowships from the El Paso Community Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Creative Art Residency Program.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

I was born in the Southwest. From a landscape I know well, and through the lens of history, this film's story is told. At the height of the Mexican Revolution, Pancho Villa raided Columbus, N.M. Every year, the town’s commemoration of the raid opens old wounds. After decades of repetition, this story has come to shape the town’s identity. In today’s climate, crossing the border between the US and Mexico in a ceremony of bi-national reconciliation is as exceptional as it is inevitable. My visual perspective fashioned over 25 years of hybrid film-making combines pristine archival material of the raid and the US military expedition which followed it with a camera that observes its present-day interlocutors from an intimate distance. I spent months with these border dwellers. Each of their stories about Villa dovetails with those of their own life in the borderlands to create a crucial, timely portrait of the US/Mexico border.