News
Border Wall Documentary "Sangre y Tierra"
Posted Aug 3, 09:33 pm
Last week, Michelle Garcia a journalist living in NYC, originally from South Texas, Carmen Vidal, our Director of Photography, and I went to South Texas to film material for a fundraising trailer for Michelle’s documentary about the construction of the Border Wall along the banks of the Rio Grand river and the reaction/resistencia of South Texans/ American Citizens who own land by the river and their communities. Today’s guest blogger is Michelle Garcia:
A few months ago I wrote an essay about the Texas Border Wall for The Washington Post , one week after I buried my mother. She died a few days before the third anniversary of my father’s death. I put everything into that essay, love and tears and final farewells but then I began to see it, as a film. A film about the land—ties that binds us together across generations and clans. Land on an embattled border that tells the stories of families, revolutions, liberation, the land of generational memory.
Barbara Renaud, a writer and blogger, suggested I call Laura Varela and that first conversation went something like: I know EVERYONE thinks they can make a film and I’m not trying to be cavalier but I need to make a film, this film. Yeah, she said, it sounds like a great idea. And she stepped up, offering ideas for funding, offering to work on the shoot, payment forthcoming in the form of a live chicken or another trip to Whataburger.
Last weekend we shot the fundraising trailer in the Rio Grande Valley. Highlights from my first-ever documentary shoot: a falling live wire (on us!), a car accident, condensation in the camera, oh yes, and the hurricane. And then Carmen, my DP, bought a lottery ticket and we won two bucks and our luck changed. Highlights: a boat ride down the Rio Grand at dusk, an indigena ceremony on land that will be swallowed by the Wall, riding in the back of a pick up truck to a ranch on the Rio Bravo and adjacent to site of the last Civil War battle. Laughing about homeboys and live wires. The moment that Laura and Carmen said, it’s beautiful.
Hostile and brutal on the outside, spiritual and beautiful on the inside, this is the land of my ancestors, of early morning hunting trips with my father and racing up the windmill to see how far into the horizon dreams can reach. Maybe only little girls and old men find inspiration from the vast sky and the hostile terrain that makes us strong. But that’s worth something; it’s worth keeping.
I left my pick up truck at my parents’ house in Alice. Laura and Carmen waited patiently while I grabbed the last few remnants of memories—-canceled checks, old photographs, a conch shell, my first record album ever. I locked up the house and we drove away, momentos in the suitcase, but my essence, the seed of my inspiration and the story of our people committed to tape, so that someday others can see what we do, down there in South Texas.
Thank you so much for helping me tell them who we are.
Michelle Garcia