"Made in L.A.": Screening of Documentary on Garment Workers Presented by Filmmaker and Department of Labor Studies

“Made in L.A.,” an award-winning documentary on immigrant garment workers in Los Angeles will be shown on Monday, March 10, in honor of the 30th anniversary of labor studies at California State University, Dominguez Hills. Almudena Carracedo, the film’s director, producer, cinematographer and co-editor, will be present for question-and-answer session after the screenings, which will be held at 5:30 and 7 p.m. in LaCorte Hall, A-103.

“It’s important to understand the conditions that immigrant workers are experiencing, not just in the garment industry but in many other industries, so that we can all work to give them full rights for the work that they do and their contribution to our society,” says Carracedo, who spent five years working on the film. She underscores the value of “Made in L.A.” for a student audience, saying the 2007 release “puts a human face to issues that are normally talked about in numbers or statistics.”

“Sometimes when we study [a subject], we forget that there are real people who are experiencing the facts we are learning,” she says. “The film connects the students with issues that they’re experiencing in the local communities. Many of us at one point have experienced a moment where we felt we had to claim our rights.

“It’s not just about the struggle of immigrant garment women in the industry,” Carracedo notes. “The film is really about what it takes to continue a struggle for what you believe is right. In this case, it’s an industry, but it could be your school, your home. The film talks about how that process of claiming your rights shapes you as a person and helps you understand who you are.”

Vivian Price, assistant professor of interdisciplinary studies, says “Made in L.A.” will help to answer a lot of questions that students may have about the “misunderstandings and controversies over issues of immigration and work.”

“We were looking for an important event that was something that epitomized Los Angeles,” says Price. “The film explains the situations of garment workers, and undocumented garment workers especially, in terms of the structure of the business. The audience learns to understand people as human beings and starts identifying with them in their attempts to make a living. It’s really important to give people a chance to understand the lives of those who are forced to leave their countries and find ways to support themselves and their families.”

“Made in L.A.”premiered on television as part of the PBS series “P.O.V.” It has received numerous accolades around the world, including Special Mention of the Jury at the Valladolid International Film Festival in Spain, the Henry Hampton Award for Excellence in Film and Digital Media from the Council on Foundations, and the Corky Gonzales Righteousness Award at the Cine Sin Fin East L.A. Chicano Film Festival. It has been screened at college campuses across the country, including Cal Tech and Columbia University. It has also been shown at a number of international film festivals, including the Amnesty International Film Festival in Canada, the Seoul International Labor and Film Festival in South Korea, and the Havana International Film Festival in Cuba. This spring, “Made in L.A.” will be shown at the Paris Human Rights Film Festival and Docaviv, the Tel Aviv International Documentary Film Festival.

Carracedo says the bilingual production attracts diverse audiences and brings them together.

“We’re not geared [to showing the film] at only one kind of campus,” she says. “It’s important to understand the privilege you have as a student and to exercise that privilege by creating a better society, the society that you want.”

A native of Madrid, Carracedo emphasizes the benefits of “Made in L.A.” to Latino students as an example of positive role models.

“We are doing outreach in the Latino community because Latinos in this country are not used to seeing themselves represented in a positive way,” she states, “not just as victims or thieves, the stereotypes we see in the media, but as active participants in society. Our poster for the film does attract a lot of Latinos to the screenings because they are not used to seeing three Latinas standing there with pride in a movie poster. We are happy that it provides a window, a beautiful and human window, into the lives of these workers who are the parents of a lot of Latino students on campuses today, and to make them feel proud of their parents’ work and of their heritage.”

The screenings of “Made in L.A.” are free and open to the public. This event is sponsored by the departments of Labor Studies, Women's Studies, Chicana/o Studies, and Philosophy, the Labor Studies Group, the Center for Service Learning, the Honors Program, the Human Resource Management Association, IDS/PACE, the Multicultural Center and Toro Productions.

For more information, contact Price at (310) 243-3583 or vprice@csudh.edu.

- Joanie Harmon

Photo above: Filmmaker Almudena Carracedo will be at Dominguez Hills to discuss her documentary, "Made in L.A.," which will be screened on campus on Mar. 10.

Photo by Felicity Murphy