A movie for the movement, not for the class

In my Visual Research Methods class we were given assignments to create movies.  For the activists in the class (and there were a lot of us!) we came upon some issues of audience and purpose.  Before this class I was experimenting in making movies for "the movement"; basically capturing actions and activism of different movements I am involved in: the student movement, the immigrant's rights movement, the undocumented student movement, the feminist movement, the queer rights movement,  the anti-racist movement, the worker's rights movement, the media justice movement, the global health movement and every combination and connecting movements.  But in making films for this class I was to make films based in the film and media theory we were learning and my audience was my professor and my classmates.  Things I was doing such as putting up video clips with my "voice" coming across as text between clips asserted myself as the voice of authority, and putting music to the images is a manipulative tool to incite emotions.  I needed to push myself to create self-reflexive films as well as to think about the ethical consequences of revealing people's full names, legal statuses, and locations.  At one point I had to make an ethnography and I was challenged to do so without doing it on a group that necessarily trusted me.  This pushed me to think about what should be done in terms of relationship building before filming people.  However, my work for class still differs from my work for the movement.  I would not place text on video or photographs for a class project, but I would for an educational video.

This brings me to what I am posting here: Eddie, an organizer for the a local day labor organizing center asked me to make a film of this years actions that the Day Laborers have been involved with to show at a recent event.  The funny thing is that afterward everyone was asking me to please put it on the internet.  Many of these people were part of or associated with the people who were considerably "concerned" over my video "Una Mirada a los Invisibles" being on the internet for fear of inciting Minute Men backlash.  I was wary and decided against it.  My video was then shown on Pitzer College's campus (and I was notified about 10 minutes in advance) at one of their weekly Day Laborer/student "Encuentros" and the next thing I know I am being asked to please put it on the internet so that the organizing center can put it on their website.  I finally decided to do it.  Since its on the internet I thought I might as well share it on my blog for all to see, so here it is:

Una Mirada a los Invisibles

Video Essay: Una Mirada a los Invisibles

The assignment was to show visual culture and as filmmakers we were to work within communities with whom we were already working.  For this reason I thought of the jornaleros (day laborers) I teach English and computers to on the a local street corner.

Near the end of the film, one of the jornaleros who I will just call Jose, asks me why I am interviewing them.  I found the question a little uncomfortable, which is what I was hoping for. Filming a population that is in constant danger if made visible is a tricky thing, and though many of the guys were happy to help me just because we trusted each other, being asked “why are you filming us?” is a more than appropriate question.  Of course I had explained to everyone by email and in person what the project was, and Jose already knew, but asking me again I believe was his way of reminding me that I (whether I was holding the camera at the time or not) was indeed filming them.  By answering, I was literally “writing” my thesis statement, but instead of placing it at the beginning so the audience knows what I am attempting to convey I placed it at the end.  I am then reversing the standard essay form and explaining my intent as a filmmaker which erases or at least influences the interpretive possibilities.  This will challenge “readers” to “see” what they saw, see my intent as the filmmaker, and to question my privilege along with the subjects in the film.

Aside from the form change, creating a visual essay rather than a written one enabled me to create something to be shared among a wider audience.  This is one way that the theory is able to turn into practice.  This video can be used for educational purposes or promotional purposes (i.e. volunteer recruitment), and the actual act of making the film created a dialogue among the corner community.  Were this to be a written essay, even if it were in Spanish, it would only be accessible to those who speak the language of academia.  This video, being in English and Spanish, can be shared with a larger population of people.  Another thing about making a video essay rather than a written essay is that it is a lot of work, but the work is very different.  In being different, I was motivated to learn in a fresh sort of way.  Putting this video together has already given me incredible appreciation for film form and peaked my interest in being more playful the next time around.  

Catching the uncomfortable was an important part of capturing the humanity of all of us.  Just as Jose made me uncomfortable, I believe I made who I will call Pancho uncomfortable when I talked about sexual harassment, and our interaction is meant to make the viewers feel a twinge of something as they wonder what will happen when he defensively says he wasn’t trying to make me uncomfortable when he called me pretty and when he brushes off sexism meanwhile taking racism seriously. 

Though I explained the concept of the video to the guys, the conversations were organic and I took a lot of footage to be able to select the parts of conversations which were appropriate for the film.  Many times I asked questions expecting certain answers and was reminded that this is a naive method of research.  For example when I asked one of the men if he feels that he is in a community, I was expecting him to talk about the jornalero community, the immigrant community, or something like that and he instead saw community as the dominant and himself as on the outside.  His answer was a teaching moment and forced me to think about the terms we use in grad school and the meanings attached to them "on the outside." 

The title of my film was created by Jose, as he is a poet.  It literally means “a look at the invisible.”  The title is the thesis, in short.  However, the title doesn’t quite convey my role as subject in front of the camera.  As I stated in the film I am sometimes too visible, and my presence as a filmmaker is also visible.  However, the title is also about power-the truly invisible character which we attempted to make visible in this movie. One may literally and corporally see the men and me: see our gender expressions, the color of our skins, interpret our class positions.  But what I hope to bring “into the visible” is the power relations that decide these divisions.  As one of the (anonymous) men said in the movie: we as human beings all feel the same emotions, “the same pain,” and ending these divisions would ultimately mean ending the power structures which aim to victimize and separate us. 

After "finishing" the film it went through a series of peer reviewers (Dr. Juhasz and a Pitzer professor) and I ended up making several edits and moving footage around.  Since my brother, his partner and I invited Jose to see Machete (for another blog post I'm ruminating on) I showed the video essay to Jose afterward and asked him what he thought about it.  He thought it was very interesting and was adamant about taking all my footage and all the other footage that people have taken over the years and making a documentary and we had a long talk about the complicatedness of making a film for a a wider audience.  I included footage of his viewing practice and his reception to indicate the participatory and consensual nature of the film as well as the agency of the subjects.  I just hope that the setting-change isn't too distracting.