Internationally acclaimed Colombian filmmaker Marta Rodriguez' career documenting labor struggles and human rights issues has spanned over three decades. Tonight, she will present two of her best known, yet rarely screened, films, and discuss independent media-making within the current crisis in Colombia. Colombia Begun in 1965 as an anthropological investigation into the lives of displaced workers south of Bogota, Chircales evolved into an intimate portrait of the Castaneda family, and the forces of technological change, increasing violence, and ideological conflict that surround them. Through the process of making the film, the filmmakers themselves come to reevaluate their assumptions about exploitation and workers' involvement in ideological struggles.
Flowers are Colombia's third largest export.
But behind the beauty of the carnations and chrysanthemums sold in the US and Europe lies a horror story of hazardous labor conditions for the 70,000 women who work in the flower industry. The use of pesticides and fungicides, some banned in the developed countries that export them, has drastic health and environmental consequences. This beautiful and powerful documentary evokes the testimonies of the women workers and documents their efforts to organize with urgency and intimacy. Inspired by ghost stories she heard as a child from both her extended Aboriginal and Irish Australian families, Moffatt has constructed a sublime trilogy in which characters are haunted by the past and bewitched by memories. Choo Choo Choo Choo finds a family living by railroad tracks haunted by strange happenings.