9th(2007)
Maquilapolis: City of Factories
Vicky Funari, Sergio De La Torre
- USA, Mexico
- 2006
- 69min
- Digi-beta
- color
- Documentary
SYNOPSIS
In the Tijuana maquiladora, bordering the Mexico-US border, female migrant workers make up over 80 percent of the total workforce. They face numerous problems including arbitrary layoff by multinational companies and labor rights-infringement, environmental destruction and personal health problems due to industrial waste etc. Forming their own organization, these workers fight the government, trying to acquire rights as both women and workers, and stop environmental destruction. demonstrates how the close relationship between capitalists who, in this era of global capital, travel around the globe seeking cheap labor and capital accumulation, while destroying the environment and health of the workers, and the powerless governments, who ignore the rights of their own workers, in order to attract foreign capital and investment, results in this global phenomenon.
Aware of the problems of traditional documentary filmmaking (i.e. going into a foreign country and objectifying its inhabitants) – a method that is not so different multinational companies entering a country, objectifying its laborers in order to manufacture their products – the director forges close ties with the community and its workers, and even teaches its female workers to represent themselves and their environment through their own camera-work. Rather than simply adapting a sympathetic stance towards the workers, the film, which ends with the subtitle – “The sound and images within this film, along with its ideas, were developed together with the women in this film” -- succeeds in portraying the strength of these female workers to both thoughtfully understand their reality and to change it. The hands and the hand gestures of the female workers, highlighted throughout the film, powerfully evoke the women’s psychic strength. (KWON Eun-sun)
Aware of the problems of traditional documentary filmmaking (i.e. going into a foreign country and objectifying its inhabitants) – a method that is not so different multinational companies entering a country, objectifying its laborers in order to manufacture their products – the director forges close ties with the community and its workers, and even teaches its female workers to represent themselves and their environment through their own camera-work. Rather than simply adapting a sympathetic stance towards the workers, the film, which ends with the subtitle – “The sound and images within this film, along with its ideas, were developed together with the women in this film” -- succeeds in portraying the strength of these female workers to both thoughtfully understand their reality and to change it. The hands and the hand gestures of the female workers, highlighted throughout the film, powerfully evoke the women’s psychic strength. (KWON Eun-sun)
PROGRAM NOTE
In the Tijuana maquiladora, bordering the Mexico-US border, female migrant workers make up over 80 percent of the total workforce. They face numerous problems including arbitrary layoff by multinational companies and labor rights-infringement, environmental destruction and personal health problems due to industrial waste etc. Forming their own organization, these workers fight the government, trying to acquire rights as both women and workers, and stop environmental destruction. demonstrates how the close relationship between capitalists who, in this era of global capital, travel around the globe seeking cheap labor and capital accumulation, while destroying the environment and health of the workers, and the powerless governments, who ignore the rights of their own workers, in order to attract foreign capital and investment, results in this global phenomenon.
Aware of the problems of traditional documentary filmmaking (i.e. going into a foreign country and objectifying its inhabitants) – a method that is not so different multinational companies entering a country, objectifying its laborers in order to manufacture their products – the director forges close ties with the community and its workers, and even teaches its female workers to represent themselves and their environment through their own camera-work. Rather than simply adapting a sympathetic stance towards the workers, the film, which ends with the subtitle – “The sound and images within this film, along with its ideas, were developed together with the women in this film” -- succeeds in portraying the strength of these female workers to both thoughtfully understand their reality and to change it. The hands and the hand gestures of the female workers, highlighted throughout the film, powerfully evoke the women’s psychic strength. (KWON Eun-sun)
Aware of the problems of traditional documentary filmmaking (i.e. going into a foreign country and objectifying its inhabitants) – a method that is not so different multinational companies entering a country, objectifying its laborers in order to manufacture their products – the director forges close ties with the community and its workers, and even teaches its female workers to represent themselves and their environment through their own camera-work. Rather than simply adapting a sympathetic stance towards the workers, the film, which ends with the subtitle – “The sound and images within this film, along with its ideas, were developed together with the women in this film” -- succeeds in portraying the strength of these female workers to both thoughtfully understand their reality and to change it. The hands and the hand gestures of the female workers, highlighted throughout the film, powerfully evoke the women’s psychic strength. (KWON Eun-sun)
Director
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Vicky FunariVicky Funari
설명 준비중입니다.
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Sergio De La TorreSergio De La Torre
Sergio De La Torre is a photographer, performance artist and installation artist. His photographic, performance and installation works have focused on issues regarding diaspora/tourism and identity politics. In 1995, He co-founded the performance/installation group Los Tricksters. De La Torre\'s works, among them Access Denied has appeared in the Cleveland Performance Art Festival, and in San Francisco at the DeYoung Museum and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. De La Torre\'s film and video work has included photography for La Raza, directed by Alfonso Dávila, and assistant to the art director on Garden of Eden, directed by Maria Novaro.
Credit
- ProducerVicky Funari, Sergio De La Torre
- Screenwriter Vicky Funari, Sergio De La Torre, The women of Women’s Rights Advocates
- Cinematography Daniel Gorrell, Sophia Constantinou
- Editor Vicky Funari
- Music Pauline Oliveros,Bostich, Fussible of the Nortec Collective, John Blue
- Sound Phiip Perkins, CAS
