The Guestworker: Bienvenidos a Carolina del Norte (review)

Employing documentary techniques and field-work strategies, The Guestworker tells the story of the H2–A "guestworker" program and one of its participants, Don Candelario Gonzalez Moreno. Through interviews, visual stories, and brief narrative texts containing contextual information, the film provides a "slice of life" documentation and uses one man's story to illuminate a much larger narrative—one that impacts almost every American who buys the produce harvested by hundreds of thousands of "guests" from south of the U.S. border.

The film organizes itself loosely by following the chronological path of H2–A guestworker Don Candelario from spring to late fall. The exploration of the tensions that emerge in the tales of workers and farmers weaves seamlessly throughout the script, and interesting parallels and disjunctions can be noted through the thoughtful editing of the interviews gathered over a two-year period of fieldwork and filming. The viewer is first introduced to both the H2–A program and Don Candelario as the buses unload after their trip up from the U.S./Mexico border. The film concludes after the viewer is allowed to travel back across the border to the home of Don Candelario after a summer of work and harvest. Throughout the film, text appears on the screen with the date and information about the weather, which moves the film forward and also orients the viewer to how the passing time and the vagaries of weather become a significant part of the agricultural cycles and seasons. Time is one of the key elements of the film, and it is highlighted by the filmmaker's playing with the linear flow of the narrative to underscore the fact that the guest-workers' time is not their own. They want to work and to earn more money, but drought conditions mean that there are only a few hours of work each day. To avoid being added to the "black list," however, they must remain at the farm until the boss allows them to go back to Mexico.

This highlights one of the many moments that disrupt the seeming neutrality of the film and illustrates its contribution to discussions of immigration and the H2–A program. This film is not designed as an exposé, but of course the narratives carry within them stories that resonate in multiple ways, exposing questions, concerns, and doubts about the program and the human lives sustaining the larger process. The frame used throughout this film is mostly an intimate one. While there are broad shots of the workers in the fields or on the bus, almost immediately the lens quickly pans in and focuses on one worker's hands or face. The cinematography makes clear that the film is not about vegetables but about the people who plant and harvest them; it is not about immigration but about the people who move across borders. With this intimate aesthetic and due to the nature of the political, cultural, and economic stories embedded in The Guestworker, some of the decisions made in the production and editing of the film merit additional consideration.

As a technology of representation, film and video allow for the semblance of verisimilitude that can produce for many audiences a belief in the "truth" and "authenticity" of the story that is unfolding. Yet simultaneously, the invisibility of the film crew, director, editor, and other staff creates uneasiness, as audiences are required to evaluate the reliability of the film's representation of events. How well does the action depicted on screen reflect the originating event, and does the editing and production of the film reliably represent this? These questions mediate viewer reception and are weighted depending upon the nuance and perspective offered through the film event. And while this summary simplifies the very complex experience of film, The Guestworker brings to the fore how videographic techniques can be strengthened through engagement with thoughtful fieldwork processes.

Given trends towards reflexive and collaborative ethnographic process, both in research and its creative outcomes...