UNIVERSAL CITIZEN

is a meditation on attempts to film a smuggler in the Peten Jungle of Guatemala. The smuggler, an ex-inmate of Dachau, refuses to be filmed except at a distance. The filmmaker's pursuit along jungle roads and through Mayan ruins leads to the discovery of the true subject of the film. Director: Peter Thompson; Cinematographer: Peter Thompson; Editors: Peter Thompson, Greg Snider, Sherrie Gal. Video, color, 23 minutes. 1986.

FROM REVIEWS

"An ambitious and dense interweaving of objective and subjective elements yielding a complex personal travelogue." --Jonathan Rosenbaum, "Critic's Choice", THE READER

"As Thompson puts it, 'Universal Hotel/Univesal Citizen' deals with three main themes: 'the emotional thawing of men by women, the struggle to disengage remembrance from historical anonymity, and unrecoverable loss.... Thompson’s family proves to be as relevant to this investigation as his aloneness with his ideas over years of reflection; the mysterious coalescence of disparate strands in a varied life is one of the many byproducts of this sustained and haunting historical meditation." --Jonathan Rosenbaum, ARTPAPERS, Sept./Oct. 1989