Revisiting Fillmore: 800 + Photos and a Film

The last months, in COVID times, led me to revisit and share a photo series and the film that grew out of:

1. A resolution making English an official language. It divided a community (now we’d say polarized).

2. An early effort to look at a place with a camera and see beyond political acts.

THE STORY

Some months ago a museum in a town in Southern California ordered a copy of a film, called Miles from the Border, a 15 minute 16 mm film produced with a crew of grad students in 1986-1987. I followed up and contacted the museum to see if they were also interested in the 800-900 photos I’d taken on a classic twin lens (TLR) Rolleflex camera, during the same period. The staff was excited. So we got the hand developed negatives scanned and I visited Fillmore once again, thumb drive of images in hand. Now a slew of the black and white photographs have been shared on Facebook and Instagram so people can see them, identify who is in the images, comment and get copies for personal use. It’s led to families coming into the museum to see more images of friends and family, Zoom conversations, chatter about changes in the community and conversations about immigration, the English only resolution (that ended in 1999), laboring in citrus packing plants and the bra factory, worker housing on ranches and other topics that aren’t always talked about.

VIRTUAL FILM SCREENING

"Radiates humanity. Inspirational!"
Eduardo Diaz, Director, San Antonio CineFestival

“The immigrant experience is examined firsthand in the brief but powerful Miles from the Border. “
Teaching Tolerance

On Wednesday March 9th at 6 PM AKST there will be a free virtual screening of the film Miles from the Border.
Click here for more information. Hosted by the Fillmore Museum..

Manuela and Ben Aparicio, sister and brother, brought by their parents in search of a better future, arrived in the United States from a rural village in Mexico to a community in California. Twenty years later, they share their stories of dislocation and their determination to succeed. The screening will be followed by a discussion with Manuela and Ellen Frankenstein, the film director.

Ellen Frankenstein, the Director of Artchange has been making films and taking photos for almost three decades, starting in the darkroom and ending up on on computer screen in the digital realm.

See more photos from the series here.
Thanks to Panda Lab #rolleiflex And to the Fillmore Historical Museum for sharing the photos with the community.