{"id":26816,"date":"2023-09-15T08:30:30","date_gmt":"2023-09-15T15:30:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/independentlens\/?post_type=blog&p=26816"},"modified":"2024-01-03T17:15:09","modified_gmt":"2024-01-04T01:15:09","slug":"short-film-folk-frontera-shows-the-culture-of-life-on-the-border","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/independentlens\/blog\/short-film-folk-frontera-shows-the-culture-of-life-on-the-border\/","title":{"rendered":"Short Film “Folk Frontera” Shows the Culture of Life on the Border"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Ivonne Spinoza<\/b><\/p>\n

Alejandra Vasquez and Sam Osborn\u2019s <\/span>Folk Frontera<\/i><\/b><\/a> i<\/span>s a border-set tale, expertly portraying the beauty and heartbreak that comes with living on the U.S.-Mexico border. Connecting two strangers through their love of music, this short film highlights the uncertainty the inhabitants of the border must dance with in their daily lives.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I talked with Alejandra and Sam about their film journeys and how this film came to be.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Ivonne Spinoza: How was the process of deciding what this short film would be about? What do you feel your approach to this topic brings to the conversation?<\/b><\/p>\n

Alejandra Vasquez & Sam Osborn:<\/b> The seed of the film came from all of the absurd stories that emerged from the borderlands, particularly in regards to how migrants, native and indigenous people, and locals, in general, are handled with a different set of laws than the rest of the country. You get close enough to the border and you enter a kind of extrajudicial zone where another set of rules exist. It\u2019s neither U.S. nor Mexico and is instead a separate space entirely.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This liminal zone has its own history, laws, culture, and music. And we thought that magical realism, with its tradition in Latin American artwork, would be a great lens through which to approach these stories. <\/span><\/p>\n

\"Alejandra

Alejandra and Sam on location in south Texas desert<\/p><\/div>\n

I think the film does a great job of capturing that border feeling of being very close and very far away at the same time. How did you find and choose the people you feature in the short?<\/b><\/p>\n

Alejandra & Sam: <\/b>The initial idea was to follow a remote postman through the Big Bend as he delivers the mail and does all the extracurricular duties that remote mailmen do in these areas, like picking up prescriptions, helping with money orders, groceries, etc. His postal route would be the connecting thread to tell the stories of the people in this region of the borderlands.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But the USPS put the kibosh on the idea once Louis DeJoy took charge of the organization. So we basically had some grant money from ITVS and a summer set aside to film in the Big Bend, but no main character. Rather than scrap the project, we decided to meet as many people as we could in the region and piece together the film that way.<\/span><\/p>\n

We probably filmed with twice as many people than are actually featured in the film, and it wasn\u2019t until we started editing that we realized that Gabriela and Molly\u2019s stories compellingly complemented each other. They were both dealing with this tension of leading lives as native <\/span>fronterizas,<\/span><\/i> and being separated from their families and worlds by a massively Byzantine immigration system.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\t\t