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.

Wayne has shaped the project from the beginning by believing in it, suggesting new angles, and putting us in contact with a vast array of other people who have supported the project. He can be thought as the detonator.

Con Mi Gente (Stephen Hickens)
http://www.conmigente.org

Stephen was instrumental in helping us enter Oaxaca, since he put us in contact with Susy and Randy Hinthorn.

COMI: Centro de Orientación del Migrante (Susy and Randy Hinthorn)
http://comi.giving.officelive.com/default.aspx

Susy and Randy are a very important link in this chain of events, because they introduced us to Father Fernando (below). They also helped us see the problem of migration from a humanitarian (and christian) perspective.

Don Bartletti (L.A Times)
http://www.kpbs.org/donbartletti

Mr. Bartletti has helped us avoid (as much as we could!) many rookie mistakes when trying to put together a journalistic piece, and also in this sense, has served as an ethical benchmark for the documentary.

Social Pastoral of Oaxaca (Fr. Fernando Cruz)
No website

Fr. Fernando picked us up in Oaxaca City in took us to San Mateo to meet his colleague, Father Gregorio (who is in charge of the parish in the beautiful pueblo of San Mateo Peñasco) and helped us convince him about the idea, which was by then still in exploratory phase.

San Mateo Peñasco's Parish (Fr. Gregorio)
No Website

Father Gregorio is a central piece of the project because he hosted the director and the cameraguy for almost a whole month in his parish and introduced them to local leaders, which softened the "landing" into the communities. He also fed them substantially.

ArtPower! (Rebecca Webb and Amy Thomas)
http://www.artpwr.com/

ArtPower!, through Rebecca and Amy, is involved in the project through an indispensable mix of guru-ness, networking and executive producing. They are also behind the idea of this blog.

UCSD Media Center (Adriene Hughes + Bill Campagna)
http://mediacenter.ucsd.edu

The UCSD Media Center has provided technical support and facilities related to the process of transferring the DV to a hard-drive and editing. This, of course, is also relevant to the extent that the producers' wallets have stopped bleeding, albeit only temporarily.