Gringo Trails (Asia premiere)
Director Pegi Vail
2013. U.S. 79 min.  

Starts at 7:00 pm

Gringo Trails is a feature-length documentary that raises urgent questions about one of the most powerful globalizing forces of our time: tourism. The film follows stories along the well-worn Western travelers' route — the gringo trail, through South America and beyond to Africa and Asia, revealing the complex relationships between colliding cultures: host countries hungry for financial security and the tourists who provide it in their quest for authentic experiences.

"We travel, initially, to lose ourselves," says travel writer Pico Iyer, "and we travel, next, to find ourselves." We travel for escape and for encounter, to challenge our assumptions and our limits, and to expand our visions of the possible. As dramatically as travelers are altered by new landscapes, values and belief systems, they also unavoidably alter the people and places they visit. Are tourists destroying the planet — or saving it? How do travelers change the remote places they visit, and how are they changed?

From the Bolivian jungle to the party beaches of Thailand, and from the deserts of Timbuktu, Mali to the breathtaking beauty of Bhutan, Gringo Trails shows the dramatic long-term impact of tourism on cultures, economies, and the environment, tracing some stories over 30 years.

Post screening Q&A with director Pegi Vail moderated by La Frances Hui, Film Curator, Asia Society.
Followed by an opening night reception.

Pegi Vail is an anthropologist and Associate Director of the Center for Media, Culture, and History at NYU. She has taught at NYU and Columbia University on Film, Culture, and Tourism. Her book Right of Passage, based on her research among backpackers in Bolivia as a Fulbright scholar, is forthcoming from Duke University Press. She directed the award-winning short documentary The Dodger's Sym-phony. Gringo Trails is her first feature-length documentary.

Watch the trailer below:

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