Immigration Turf
buy dapoxetine in the us As my first piece for The Game Changers Project I am tackling the issue of immigration raids on Latino families in the United States. I think this issue is not really focused on in mainstream media, and it is Latino filmmakers’ responsibility to address these topics and how it affects the Latino family unit.
I come from a family that was unconstitutionally deported in the 1920’s, despite my grandmother being born in Newport Beach, California. This experience has shaped my identity and I often use it to relate to my students who have experienced undocumented status in this country.
Keeping this in mind, I have developed a concept for a short experimental dance video with my students to explore the topic of immigration raids and the effects it has on Mexican families. I partnered with local non-profit United Roots and dance group TURF Inc. to create an interpretive dance video using the rich Turf Dance tradition that was homegrown by some of my students here in Oakland. For those of you who do not know, Turf Dancing is a form of Hip-Hop dance invented in East Oakland back in the early 2000’s, which continues today. It has become a staple form of expression in Oakland Hip-hop culture, and I thought it would be great to amplify that art form to be used as a vehicle to discuss political issues that affect the often-unrecognized Latino population in Oakland.
Currently the Department of Homeland Security has an “ERO Program” which is deporting thousands of people every year. This program is rarely mentioned in any journalism outlets in this country, yet they regularly lead large-scale raids on private residences and destroy thousands of families every year. Some of the statistics displayed in my film will speak to the commonality of this experience in the Latino community, and how it affects children with deported parents.
Aesthetically, I have adopted the Rasquache tradition in the Chicano community in the film. This is an art form that was popularized by Luis Valdez and El Teatro Campesino during the 1960’s, as they led an artistic revolution to support the United Farm Workers Movement in California. Rasquache refers to a state of impoverishment, or a working-class method of ingenuity that is comparable to the term “ghetto” or “imperfect”. It is a socio-political form of expression that describes a uniquely Chicano aesthetic that makes the most out of the littlest means. In adopting this artistic approach, I have chosen to use a film grain effect for the first part of the film, and shoot the second half of the film on my Iphone to highlight the Chicano filmmakers lack of resources. This decision not only allows me to match the form with content, but it allows me to further my own research in inspiring a “Rasquchista” Revolution in filmmaking. For more information on this movement and how my own media collective is advancing this movement, please click here to visit our Green Eyed Media Collective’s “Manifesto for the Modern Guerilla Filmmaker”
