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''The City'' (Spanish: ''La ciudad'') is a 1998 American neo-realist film written and directed by David Riker, his first feature film, and shot in gritty black-and-white film stock. The drama features actor Joseph Rigano and, in neo-realist fashion, an ensemble cast of non-professional actors. The film is also known as: ''The City (La Ciudad)''.〔.〕 The drama consists of four vignettes that plunges you onto New York City's poorer neighborhoods where Latin American immigrants, many of whom barely speak English, live at the mercy of exploitative employers and inflexible institutions. Many of the characters are in the United States illegally to make money in order to send back home to their poor families. The picture won numerous awards including the ''Organisation Catholique Internationale du Cinéma et de l'Audiovisuel'' (OCIC Award) at the San Sebastián International Film Festival. ==Plot== Among intermittent scenes of Latin Americans having their photo taken by a photographer, the four stories in the picture include: :Bricks (''Ladrillos''): a group of Latino men wait on a street corner for someone to hire them. A contractor (Joseph Rigano) appears in a truck and selects 10 men and promises each $50 for a day of work. But after they are dropped off across the Hudson River in a dusty lot where a building has been demolished, the terms of employment are revised by the contractor. They are to clean up bricks and do it on a piecemeal basis (15 cents a brick). The men are not happy but mush on nevertheless. An accident happens and the men are unable to help the victim and appear helpless in their fate. :Home (''Casa''): a young man named Francisco (Cipriano Garcia) newly arrived in New York strays into a "sweet 15" party and meets a serious young woman named Maria (Leticia Herrera) who turns out to be from the same Mexican town. Because he has no place to stay, she takes him home to her uncle's house. The next morning when he goes to buy some groceries for breakfast, he can't find his way back. :The Puppeteer (''Titiriero''): is a homeless street performer named Luis (Jose Rabelo) who is suffering from tuberculosis and lives with his daughter Dulce in an old station wagon. Hearing that every child in the city is guaranteed an education, the puppeteer, who has refused to stay in city shelters because of contagious diseases, attempts to enroll his daughter in school but is unable to prove he lives in New York City. :Seamstress (''Costurera''): in the final and politically incendiary vignette, a woman named Ana (Silvia Goiz) works in a sweatshop where no one has been paid for several weeks. She receives a letter from home with the news that her daughter has fallen ill and needs $400 for an operation. She pleads with her bosses for her back pay but she's threatened with dismissal. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The City (1998 film)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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