Immokalee USA documentary premieres in Talahassee.
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Georg Koszulinski created "Immokalee U.S.A." to show the state of migrant farm workers.
'Immokalee U.S.A.' gets down — way down — on the farm
By Mark Hinson DEMOCRAT SENIOR WRITER
If you're like I am, you've had friends, family members and sworn enemies who've been downsized — i.e., laid off or fired — since the American economy took a nose-dive into the deep end of the septic tank. It couldn't get much worse, right?
Wrong.
Florida filmmaker Georg Koszulinski's documentary "Immokalee U.S.A." is a sobering look at the plight of immigrant workers from Latin America who are barely surviving as laborers on a massive tomato farm on the edge of the Big Cypress Swamp near Fort Myers. The Tallahassee Film Society screens "Immokalee" this weekend at All Saints Cinema, and Koszulinski will be on hand to discuss his movie.
"Immokalee" took me by surprise. I was a fan of Koszulinkski's recent documentary "Cracker Crazy." It was a free-wheeling, flip and funny surreal Sunshine State history comprised mostly of vintage photos and kitschy tourist propaganda. But now that I think about it, "Cracker Crazy" also had a serious side that touched on such non-Disney topics as the massacres in Rosewood and Matanzas. In "Immokalee," Koszulinski plays it starkly straight.
There's an old rule of filmmaking that says "show, don't tell." That's exactly what Koszulinski does in "Immokalee." There's no narration, no interpretation, no editorializing, no Michael Moore-type intrusion or showboating. Koszulinski just takes his camera into the trailers, churches and fields of Immokalee to examine the daily life of the men, women and children who live on the edges of giant agribusiness. I'm sure Koszulinski's camera was not exactly welcomed in many of these places and I'm sure he had to shoot footage on the sly.
Along the way, we meet an elderly gentleman who strums an out-of-tune guitar all day on his porch, kids who wonder why their fathers are never home because they work the fields from pre-dawn to dark, a mom who's convinced her child got cancer from pesticides, a Guatemalan man who literally loses his mind because he can't find work, a church worker who tries as hard as she can to feed the hungry, and two moms who cook delicious-looking tamales to make ends meet. There's nothing sensational — everything in "Immokalee" is what it is.
Koszulinski also doesn't paint the picture in black-and-white by targeting land owners. He includes several interviews with an easy-going farmer who insists he's "no better than these people right here" and is proud that he too has performed the most lowly chores in the field. There's no bad guy to take the easy blame in "Immokalee."
By Mark Hinson DEMOCRAT SENIOR WRITER
If you're like I am, you've had friends, family members and sworn enemies who've been downsized — i.e., laid off or fired — since the American economy took a nose-dive into the deep end of the septic tank. It couldn't get much worse, right?
Wrong.
Florida filmmaker Georg Koszulinski's documentary "Immokalee U.S.A." is a sobering look at the plight of immigrant workers from Latin America who are barely surviving as laborers on a massive tomato farm on the edge of the Big Cypress Swamp near Fort Myers. The Tallahassee Film Society screens "Immokalee" this weekend at All Saints Cinema, and Koszulinski will be on hand to discuss his movie.
"Immokalee" took me by surprise. I was a fan of Koszulinkski's recent documentary "Cracker Crazy." It was a free-wheeling, flip and funny surreal Sunshine State history comprised mostly of vintage photos and kitschy tourist propaganda. But now that I think about it, "Cracker Crazy" also had a serious side that touched on such non-Disney topics as the massacres in Rosewood and Matanzas. In "Immokalee," Koszulinski plays it starkly straight.
There's an old rule of filmmaking that says "show, don't tell." That's exactly what Koszulinski does in "Immokalee." There's no narration, no interpretation, no editorializing, no Michael Moore-type intrusion or showboating. Koszulinski just takes his camera into the trailers, churches and fields of Immokalee to examine the daily life of the men, women and children who live on the edges of giant agribusiness. I'm sure Koszulinski's camera was not exactly welcomed in many of these places and I'm sure he had to shoot footage on the sly.
Along the way, we meet an elderly gentleman who strums an out-of-tune guitar all day on his porch, kids who wonder why their fathers are never home because they work the fields from pre-dawn to dark, a mom who's convinced her child got cancer from pesticides, a Guatemalan man who literally loses his mind because he can't find work, a church worker who tries as hard as she can to feed the hungry, and two moms who cook delicious-looking tamales to make ends meet. There's nothing sensational — everything in "Immokalee" is what it is.
Koszulinski also doesn't paint the picture in black-and-white by targeting land owners. He includes several interviews with an easy-going farmer who insists he's "no better than these people right here" and is proud that he too has performed the most lowly chores in the field. There's no bad guy to take the easy blame in "Immokalee."
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