Laredoans gathered at the Laredo Center for the Arts on the evening of March 20 to witness the vision of Paloma Martinez. In a little under two hours, the audience was immersed in the gripping narratives of a young boy’s transition out of housing insecurity and also experienced the oscillating joys and strife projected onto volunteers at an immigrant assistance hotline, all shot through Martinez’s lens.
Although her career as a filmmaker began only recently — receiving her MFA in Documentary Film and Video from Stanford University in 2018 — Martinez’s life has always been defined by documentation and storytelling. Whether through her family’s intimate home videos — the subject of her latest work-in-progress — or the eight years she spent as a labor organizer, the stories of those around her have inspired her to give them voice through her films.
In her opening short, Crisanto Street, Martinez employs the dual narrative of insider/outsider by not only filming with her own crew, but allowing 8-year-old Geovany, the youngest child of the family in subject, to document his own perspective through a handheld camcorder. This directorial decision, participatory film work, infuses what would have been an otherwise distanced narrative with a first-hand account that is chock full of Geovany’s inimitable joie de vivre. The juxtaposition is stark — families living in poverty in overcrowded trailer homes — but through Geovany’s eyes, we see a world that is strong in community, hope, and resilience. When the time finally comes for Geovany and his family to move into a sizable apartment, away from their trailer on Crisanto Street, the high levels of relief and excitement do not overshadow the glimpses of grief in the body language and conversations between Geovany and the people he is leaving behind. By combining the perspectives of an external adult onlooker with that of a child fully integrated into his community and lacking the magnitude of his situation, Martinez is able to convey a story that voids itself of exploitation, choosing to focus on a child-led narrative, relishing in Geovany’s joy in being a part of one community and his excitement to become part of another.
Martinez’s second screened documentary, Enforcement Hours (Sanctuary City Hotline), follows a completely different structure. Rather than following her subjects visually, she allows their voices to tell the story. Recorded excerpts of phone calls made to San Francisco’s immigrant assistance hotline play over carefully curated footage of the areas throughout the city that were subject to heavy I.C.E scrutiny and illegal raids in 2018. Images of protesters and families going about their day-to-day activities are shown simultaneously with voiceovers detailing interactions between callers and hotline volunteers, illustrating the worry, fear, and isolation felt by immigrants and the vitriol spat at volunteers from callers who do not agree with their mission.
While optics are utilized, they are not the priority of the documentary, lending to the first-hand accounts of immigrants and volunteers to take center stage. It is clear that this shift in style was made in an effort to prioritize privacy and preserve the safety of its subjects, concerns that Martinez handles with care. Through the showcasing of various accounts and individual experiences, Martinez illustrates the magnitude of anti-immigration enforcement as an issue that affects a multitude of racial/ethnic groups and individuals at varying levels of citizenship —thus turning the documentary from that of informative coverage to a community call.
Ultimately, while Martinez’s filmography does not adhere to a set style, her filmmaking is singularly defined by the integrity it allows her subjects. The tenderness with which she approaches her subjects’ most sensitive moments builds upon the intimacy she’s built with their humanity. Not once in either of her documentaries does Martinez sacrifice her empathy and respect towards her subjects in order to chase the abstraction of “the story.” Through the intimate collaboration she’s developed with her subjects, the story develops organically, and yet Martinez never allows it to overshadow her own compassion. Thus, resulting in narratives that have impact without veering off into exploitative and sensationalist territories.
Martinez came to Laredo as part of TAMIU’s Border Voices Lecture Series, which is also sponsored by Humanities Texas.
