ArtPower!Film is pleased to present our first ever blog dedicated to a first time documentary filmmaker, UCSD graduate poltical science student Alex Ruiz. An important ArtPower!Film mission is to foster the talents of emerging ucsd filmmakers. Our hope is that you will engage with and learn from Alex’s creative journey – his trials and tribulations as he brings his idea to fruition. Alex and his crew will post images, clips and comments on a weekly basis.
The Treatment
About the Documentary Film:
This documentary seeks to present a humanized perspective on the problem of illegal migration from Mexico to the U.S. There is a dehumanized narrative surrounding this issue that objectifies illegal immigrants as criminals. It is the main point thesis of this documentary that this conception fails to acknowledge the complex political-economy at the center of the problem.
Almost everybody is winning out of this situation: migrants and their families in Mexico live better, corporations are making record profits by having access to cheap labor, which in turn allows the U.S. to maintain a competitive edge in the world economy (read China or India), American consumers are better off having lower prices in the supermarkets, and the Mexican government has an exit valve to an otherwise socially explosive situation. This context makes it almost hypocritical to point-fingers at immigrants and reduce the problem to a criminality debate. The documentary also acknowledges the fact that there are, for sure, losers in this game. There is a very real competition of labor that affects working-class American families, and the documentary also explores their points of view. Finally, it seeks to inform the debate surrounding illegal migration by presenting facts about how many illegal immigrants, because they have to work using fake documents, also pay their taxes, so they are not the leeches some anchor people portray them to be.
Migrants are not their stereotype. There is a human drama underlying each one of them, and there is a corresponsability between Mexico and the U.S. to do something.
We want to portray the humanity beyond the stereotype, the invisible, the job-taker, the alien. We do not wish to accentuate the problem, but rather influence how people in both sides of the river perceive the problem.
Biographies
Alexander Ruiz Euler – Director / Producer
Alex Ruiz is a political science PhD student at UCSD. His background as a documentary filmmaker is null, and he is stepping into these turbulent waters out of the conviction that both human excellence and misery are hidden in the daily events of our lives. Also, he realizes that his life as an academic falls short of his desire to understand this hide-and-seek because we sometimes grasp life better when it is narrated in a screen -and not necessarily through statistics.
Although he currently lives in sunny San Diego, he was born and raised in Mexico City, making him an average neurotic chilango.
Jon Wetterau – Director of Photography
Jon Wetterau is a documentary filmmaker and cinematographer who has produced two films and worked on many others in different parts of the world. Jon was born and lives in Queens, New York and studied filmmaking with Adolfas Mekas at Bard College in the 90s. He is currently pursuing an MFA at Hunter College.
Jon’s most recent production “Doual’a: A Portrait of Three Quartiers” (2007, 54 mins.) is a glimpse of different sides of life in the commercial capital of Cameroon, Douala.
He has worked on his own short films including: “The Road from New York to CentroAmerica” (1997), a personal film about a road trip to Costa Rica; “Keep It Moving” (2000), the story of three New York City bicycle messengers and “Moving to Mexico” (in progress), a film about American gentrification in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. He worked for Ashim Ahluwalia on the award-winning films “Thin Air” (1998) and “John and Jane” (2004) as well on Susan Kaplan’s “Three of Hearts”(2006), Paul Korenkeweicz’s “Stephen Pace: Art Through a Life”(2000) and Suzanne Schulz’ “Modern Times: Building Community in America’s First Suburb” (2001).
Jon is committed to projects that explore how world events have more of an impact on peoples’ lives in the 21st century.
Chuk Moran - Editor
Chuk Moran studies cultural systematics of new media at UC San Diego's PhD program in Communication. He designs interactivity affordances in the inter-disciplinary mashup performance format in continued development by the Kamza and Bar Kamza Project of UCSD. He continues outsider work in children's books, video, audio cutup/mashup, painting, cooking, and clothing design.
8 Comments:
Alex, I really like where you are going with this, and there is a bit of a nice stylistic approach that is necessary in filmmaking - it raises the bar a bit I think so it's not too much like a student film.
With that said the trailer is too long. I thought a trailer was to be 5 minutes? I would certainly cut half of your materials and keep to the more poignant and dramatic footage to emphasize the distance between one culture and the other. If you want/need clarification I would be more than happy to talk to you about this in person.
I'd love to, thanks for commenting. Would you like to get coffee at some point? I'll buy you a cup of that nasty coffee cart stuff...
It might actually just be a misuse of the term trailer, and maybe 'short version' or 'funding version' would be more appropriate?
Thanks,
Alex
Alex,
The two locations are world's apart in every way, which makes the story you document so very interesting. The initial cut is really great. From a cinematic perspective, I like the way you let the images tell the story. There's the shot of the new washing machine in the Magdalena shanty (which speaks to the economic connection with Austin). Another early shot has a group of campesinos weaving something...what? Moments later, one of the women descibes the activity and its centrality to the eocnomy of the village. This resolves the "puzzle" of the inital image AND increases the importance of the woman's comments. very nice.
On a final note, your working title is a bit overwrought. How about the using your comment header, "Frijoles and Spam" for the title?
best,
Lawrence
i like L's comments about your work. i like the idea of calling it Friojoles and Spam (mexico and the U.S.)...and focusing on the similiarities and differences bt austin and magdelena- ultimately how connected the two places are as the overarching theme vs the humanization aspect- which will come out anyway.
hey guys, yeah the title is something that still need a bit of thought. the 'frijoles and spam' idea is actually not mine, it's jon's (as well as the post). he made that suggestion in Austin at some point.
Lawrence: what these people are weaving are hats, which is what everybody does there 'for a living'. crazy right? the hat-weaving will be a very important piece in the final product, and i hope it becomes clearer.
Hello!
Wow...this looks like it is coming together well..
The message is very clear, and the narrative is great..
I really like it-- very personal.. It reminds me of some of the families
in Puerto Penasco- a tourist town, with poor homes all around it.
Overall, seeing these things makes you appreciate what you have.
Thank you for doing this documentary- you never know who it will
help.
Hi Olivia, thanks for watching. I've never been to Puerto Peñasco but I know it. Jon, the cameraman, is working himself on a documentary about gentrification in San Miguel de Allende in Mexico, a beautiful city that is becoming what you see in Rocky Point.
I guess the only difference with the pueblos we were in is that there is no rich tourist or local town! Everything is just so damn poor... Like one-dollar-a-day poor.
Thanks again for commenting.
The good name for a 9 minute fundraising trailer is a preview. It shouldn't be more than 7:59 maximum with one minute of credits.
Thank you J. Lawrence for mentioning the washing machine. I caught that one while Alex was chatting.
The hat weaving is something that just about everybody does when they're sitting around chatting, or on the bus, or even walking down long roads. We have a lot of footage of that, in fact I think there's more stuff from San Antonio that might be best.
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