Filmmaker: Cynthia Hill
Film: The Guestworker
October 9-18, 2007
About the filmmaker:
Cynthia Hill is an independent filmmaker in Durham, North Carolina. Cynthia worked as a producer and editor at GLC Productions, a post-production facility in New York City, before returning to work on her own films in the South. Cynthia is the co-producer of February One, a documentary about the 1960 Greensboro, NC lunch counter sit-ins, which premiered on PBS in 2005. Cynthia’s first independent documentary, Tobacco Money Feeds My Family, is currently on the festival circuit and looking for a broadcast home. In addition, Cynthia is the co-founder of the Southern Documentary Fund, a documentary-artist support organization based in North Carolina.
About the film:
The Guestworker follows 66 year-old Mexican farm laborer Don Candelario Gonzalez Moreno through his tenth year of work through the H-2A Guestworker Visa program. In spite of back breaking labor, unpredictable pay, separation from homeland and family, and no chance for American citizenship, Candelario and his fellow laborers return year after year for a chance at economic betterment.
The film offers an eye-opening look into both the personal struggles of the Mexican laborers and American farmers involved in the program, as well as the historical and practical nature of the H2A program. Filmmakers Hill and Thompson stands back from the work eschewing narration. As she says, "The Guestworker looks at the issues surrounding the program from both sides, documenting the challenges farm workers face in their struggle to secure a future for their families back home in Mexico and details the pressures on the farmers to produce their crops.”
The mix of the personal and the historical allows the film to be emotionally powerful without being manipulative. The objective, distanced approach that Hill and Thompson take is complemented by poignant moments, like when Candelario says he must continue working to support his wife “until the end of her life or mine.” The Guestworker offers a much needed perspective on the little known, twenty-year old H2A guestworker program.
Opening Short:
Bowl Digger
Directed by Kristy Higby (Documentary)
A loving story of octogenarians Maxie and Hilton Eades, rural South Carolinians who create wooden bowls and dough trays as durable as their creators.
Tour Dates & Locations:
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