Late last year, I went out to my hometown agriculture fields of Salinas and spoke with some of the farmworkers. Being around them, you could feel their desire to be accepted as just hard-working people rather than anything else.
I showed up around 5:30 a.m., let them get comfortable with my camera (which did not take long) and off we went.
I wanted to direct a piece about what I grew up around. They are the engine of our community, the people who work in the fields. I wanted to portray it in a visually appealing way to show the beautiful struggle of it all, and, essentially, I just wanted to give them a voice. I would love to dig deeper into this matter in the near future with a longer developed documentary aimed for the festival circuit(s).
I am family friends with one of the workers there and he received permission from the company to shoot the video. The workers were very distant at the beginning but after I cracked a few jokes with them and spoke with confidence, they were lining up to speak to me.
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