CURATE-A-FILM | Tent City, Seed & The Other Side

DATELINE: July 29, 2010
PMD-For-Hire HQ
The final three episodes in the FUTURESTATES collection…and you won’t be disappointed, believe me.

Not a bad episode to be found. Here was the final trio of shorts in the FUTURESTATES sci-fi collection. I was sad to see this series end.

TENT CITY (2010, ITVS, short, runtime: 18m35s, director: Aldo Velasco):

Widespread economic ruin in the United States has forced thousands upon thousands from their homes. Americans are compelled to dwell once again in Hooverville-like tent cities at the edge of town, carving out a hardscrabble existence on what little resources they have remaining. This survival of the fittest in its purest form. Matthew Ochoa (portrayed convincingly by Anthony Giangrande) is a former comic book artist who works for the city’s Resident Eviction Squad. He’s part of a team tasked with ejecting families from the houses they can no longer afford. Ochoa, however, is torn about his well-paying job. His lavish salary and perqs (for example, the black market oranges he brings home one evening) permit Ochoa’s family to enjoy an above-average standard of living, although things are not at all rosy chez Ochoa. Matthew’s lone son, Ivan, is tormented by the kids at school who know what his father really does for a living. Ivan is miserable and the tension in the otherwise sedate Ochoa household is palpable. The more people Ochoa evicts during the day, the worse it makes him feel at night because he realizes how much pain he’s causing for the families he’s evicting. His job is rapidly stripping away any shred of dignity he has for himself. As they play a familiar storytelling game of “Trapezoid,” Matthew regales Ivan with a fantastic yarn about a company which created a robot whose sole job was to remorselessly do the company’s bidding. As he delves deeper into this tale-within-a-tale, Matthew gains a lucid understanding of what he must finally do to save his soul. If he does this, he can finally reclaim the high regard his family once held him in. So he quits his job. This forces the Ochoa family to uproot themselves to Tent City, trading their secure future for the hell which is certain to come in camp. But at least Matthew can begin walking with his head high once again, and his family can respect him once more.

Notable about Tent City:

Stylistically, director Aldo Velasco employed an obscure 1962 style Chris Marker once used in La jetée: part of Tent City was recounted using voice-over narration and still black and white imagery. The short’s two “action sequences,” in which the Resident Eviction Squad’s goons eject residents delinquent on their mortgage payments, are good to watch for aspiring filmmakers. It shows how to most effectively shoot scenes rife with tension. I had a hunch was that actor Anthony Giangrande didn’t have children of his own and I made a point of telling Aldo: it was Giangrande’s distant, detached way of interacting with Ivan (Austin Michael Coleman) that convinced me parenting was virgin territory for him. Velasco also expressed his desire to one day shoot an entire feature using Marker’s still photography technique.

SEED (2010, ITVS, short, runtime: 15m37s, director: Hugo Perez):

It’s the year 2022 and a single entity is in total command of the food supply: Mendelian Corporation. “Heirloom” — or natural — seeds which are readily subject to contamination and disease have been made illegal, and corporal consequences await the “seed runners” refusing to heed this national ban. Refusing to kowtow to the Mendelian monopoly, the runners form secret cells across the country and remain a constant thorn in the side for the company and difficult to police. Mendelian has therefore founded a youth organization — the Sprouts — tasked with the job of venturing out into neighbors’ random fields armed with specially-designed “seed-sniffers” to test them for their seeds’ pedigree. Those discovered populated by disease-susceptible heirloom strains are immediately razed to the ground and burned, and severe penalties await their owners. They are hauled away at gunpoint by fascist-type sentries in clear view of the neighborhood. Juan’s father Mateo is a suspected seed runner, and Juan is his local Sprouts’ detachment’s most talented member. He’s a leader. But he now finds himself in a classic conundrum: he is compelled by law and duty to report his father as a criminal. But what will Juan do?

Things I enjoyed:

Hugo Perez — as I’d later learned during the behind-the-scenes footage — had a clear vision for this film. He wanted Fascist-era overtones to permeate the piece. The Komsomol (the Soviet Youth League), the Hitler Jugend (Hitler Youth), and the Red Guards of Mao’s Cultural Revolution of 1966-1976, are clearly evoked in Seed. Actor Sebastian Villada, playing Juan, portrays what happens when children are manipulated by a regime into declaring fealty first to State rather than to family. Perez also demonstrates that expensive-looking movie gear isn’t hard to show on-camera. Watch the short’s behind-the-scenes footage for Perez’s explanation how all suddenly became possible with $5′s worth of 1950s-era electronics.

THE OTHER SIDE (2010, ITVS, short, runtime: 18m46s, director: Amyn Kaderali):

In 2040 Americans once again become immigrants. Dire economic circumstances at home have forced them to seek out greener pastures abroad, across the border in Mexico. American jobs are practically nonexistent (unemployment is at a soul-crushing 86%!) and the United States has reverted into lawlessness, with roving gangs, stray guns, and general mayhem reigning supreme. National resources are at all-time lows, but over on the other side, life is paradise. Jeff and his two children, Jenny and Tyler, have been patiently waiting in an American village for their chance to illegally cross the border and reunite with the childrens’ mother who’s being put up by a Mexican convent. Before any of this can happen, though, the three must navigate a treacherous desert and 105 degree heat and avoid getting spotted by gangs who let bullets fly at the first sight of fleeing refugees. They only have four hours until sunset to make it. Just as the family reaches the border and within mere seconds of freedom, they’re spotted by US border guards and hailed down. Or are they?

What I LOVED about this film?

Said director Amyn Kaderali, his film will get Americans rethinking how they treat newcomers in their midst. With the economy in tatters of late, southward migration is not an altogether impossible scenario to envision. Latinos doing Americans’ dirtywork? Kaderali causes us to think how this situation can easily be reversed. The Other Side‘s cast is convincing in its portrayal of the abject fear of being potentially ambushed mere miles from freedom. We never quite know what’s about to happen until the very last, keeping us on the edge of our seats.

If there’s anything you’d like me to review, please let me know and I’ll get right onto it.