Saturday, March 14, 2009, 8:00 pm
Club B-10
$8 / $5 Students with ID / Members 10% discount
Member tickets are not available via the internet.

Maura, Maria and Lupe are Latina immigrants struggling to survive in the brutal conditions of Los Angeles sweatshops. Determined to win basic labor protections, these women embark on a three year odyssey that will change their lives forever. The documentary film, Made in L.A., which follows these women on their life-changing journey will be screened at MASS MoCA on Saturday March 14 at 8pm as part of the fifth annual Working Films Forum.

In addition to the filmmaker, the panel following Made in LA will include Gladi Alfaro and Ricardo Cerna, leaders of the Alliance to Develop Power Worker Center in Springfield, Mass., who worked at factories similar to the one featured in the film, and Adrian Garcia, an ADP Worker Center leader who encourages his coworkers to stand up for theirs right, dignity and respect.

At the Patina V mannequin factory outside LA sculptors create the "perfect" female body, every proportion adhering to strict standards no real woman could attain. Mannequin designer George Martin compares the mass-produced sculptures to religious icons and wonders whether there is a connection between our culture's worship of the ideal body and the worship of holy figures. And if there is, can the connection between religion and shopping be far behind?

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MASS MoCA Presents Made in L.A. as part of Working Films Forum

(North Adams, Massachusetts) Maura, Maria and Lupe are Latina immigrants struggling to survive in the brutal conditions of Los Angeles sweatshops. Determined to win basic labor protections, these women embark on a three-year odyssey that will change their lives forever. The documentary film Made in L.A., which follows these women on their life-changing journey will be screened at MASS MoCA on Saturday, March 14, at 8pm as part of the fifth annual Working Films Forum.

After learning about Los Angeles sweatshops through a newspaper article, filmmaker Almundea Carracedo decided to take a few months to make a short film about labor conditions for undocumented workers. Five years later Carracedo completed Made in L.A.. The film tells the story of three women who come together at L.A.'s Garment Workers Center to launch a campaign against a clothing retailer. Their fights attempts to hold the retailer accountable for the conditions where their merchandise is manufactured -- conditions that are deplorable: long hours, sub-minimum wage pay (or no pay), an unsafe and unsanitary workplace with rats and roaches. Carracedo saw a story unfolding that was about more than just a lawsuit, it was about a fight for dignity in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.

As seen through the eyes of Maura, Maria and Lupe, Made in L.A. focuses on the workers' struggle for basic economic justice and personal sense of self-worth which yields hope and growth, but it is also fraught with disappointments and dangers. Maura is a mother of three who left her children behind 18 years ago to make a better life for them -- she hasn't seen them since. Maria came to L.A. at 18 with her young husband, now 41, she's trapped in an abusive relationship and an abusive job. Lupe has been working in L.A. garment factories for over 15 years, since she was 17. Although she's less than five feet tall, her dynamic personality makes her a natural leader in the fight.

Completely bilingual (with bilingual subtitles) the film offers not just an expose of abuses of the garment industry but also a compassionate document of an experience. Made in L.A. chronicles these seemingly defenseless workers as they launch a very public challenge (a lawsuit and a boycott) to one of the city's flagship clothiers, demanding that attention be paid to the dark side of low-wage labor north of the U.S-Mexico border and revealing the social fault lines of the new globalization.

Born in Madrid, Almudena Carracedo is an Emmy-award winning Director and Producer. Made in L.A. is her first feature documentary. Carracedo trained in film production in Paris and Madrid, where she worked as a television director. In 2000 she came to UCLA as an international scholar to work on her doctoral dissertation on U.S./Mexico border documentaries. Her previous documentary on Tijuana as a border town, Welcome, A Docu-Journey of Impressions, received the Sterling Award for Best Short Documentary at Siverdocs Documentary Festival and screened in numerous national and international festivals. Carracedo is the 2008 recipient of NALIP's (National Association of Latino Independent Producers) ESTELA Award, and has served as a juror in several film festivals, including the Silverdocs Documentary Festival, Valladolid International Film Festival and Santiago's International Documentary Festival in Chile.

MASS MoCA is hosting the Working Films Forum for the fifth year. This interactive workshop for filmmakers is designed to ensure that their films-in-progress have deep meaningful community engagement and impact. As part of the forum, between seven and ten non-fiction filmmakers are invited to North Adams to participate in a residency with Working Films.

Working Films is a national non-profit organization based in Wilmington, N.C., and New York City that links independent documentary filmmaking with community education and organizing to ensure that documentary films reach their fullest potential. They seek to not only widen the range of documentaries, reaching new and untapped audiences, but also to enhance and enrich each viewer's engagement with the films, connecting the films to the issues that viewers care about most. Their unique community-based media initiatives support strategic local and regional efforts, and their national organizing campaigns have been linked to high-profile documentaries broadcast on HBO, the Sundance Channel and PBS. To learn more, go to www.workingfilms.org.

MASS MoCA, the largest center for contemporary visual and performing arts in the United States, is located off Marshall Street in North Adams on a 13-acre campus of renovated 19th-century factory buildings. MASS MoCA is an independent 501C3 whose operations and programming are funded through admissions and commercial lease revenue, corporate and foundation grants, and individual philanthropy. Except for an initial construction grant from the Commonwealth, and occasional competitive state and federal grants for specific programs, MASS MoCA is not government-funded.