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The Victoria College. Full-time salaried position with benefits available...
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Experimental filmmaker Dolissa Medina meant for moviegoers to feel trapped inside the trailer.
Then the theater filled with banging noises. They were quiet at first. Then they became louder.
Medina wanted viewers to feel the claustrophobia and fear that at least 73 illegal immigrants did in May 2003.
Her short film, “19 Victoria,” debuted Friday locally.
In an unconventional way, it documents the immigrants’ trip from Harlingen to Victoria that turned deadly for 19 of them.
A blast of light filled the auditorium. Then overhead footage of the trailer – found on Fleming Prairie Road in south Victoria – offers a distanced view. A TV reporter explains the image.
The dead were undocumented workers trying to get to Houston, the reporter says.
Medina, 37, wanted moviegoers to feel the immigrants’ pain before learning about who they were.
Medina lives in San Diego. She was raised in Brownsville.
She learned of the 2003 tragedy while watching TV news in San Francisco. She learned many of the smugglers were based in her hometown.
“The story was all over the world,” Medina said by phone on Friday. “It was the worst case of human smuggling in U.S. history. It’s a universal story.”
Like countless others, Medina was moved by the tragedy. She lived thousands of miles away. But the horrors hit home.
“I grew up on the border. It just really broke my heart,” she said. “As an artist, I wanted to do something to tell this story.”
To tell it, this experimental filmmaker used light and sound to artistically convey the immigrants’ trip. She used existing photos and video and manipulated them with her own stamp.
She finished the four-minute film in 2006.
To better understand claustrophobia, she rode in a pitch-black trailer. She recorded the tractor’s sounds and banged on the walls, as the immigrants did.
“There’s no way I could replicate that experience. But even I got a little panicky,” she said.
The shreds of cinematic light that appear in her film represent the small holes immigrants kicked, punched and clawed to form in the trailer’s back doors.
Temperatures inside had reached 170 degrees Fahrenheit. Everyone inside, even those who lived, suffered injuries from dehydration, suffocation and hyperthermia.
Medina is known for her unconventional filmmaking style.
She won awards for “19 Victoria.” It’s screened all over the world – Rotterdam, Paris, Germany, Beirut, Italy, Mexico and Columbia, for starters.
The film debuted locally at the University of Houston-Victoria’s Alcorn Auditorium.
The screening was part of the Mexican Americans in Films, a component of the 22nd Annual Martín de León Symposium on the Humanities.
The annual local event promotes Hispanic culture and history.
Other films –“El Bebop Kid” and “Lydia Mendoza: Una Mirada”– were also screened. Filmmaker Carlos Calbillo, Friday night’s presenter, directed those films.
For Medina, the screening has special meaning.
“For it to be shown in Victoria … It’s like it’s coming home,” she said. “It’s an ongoing memorial to an issue that doesn’t have an end in sight.”
Gabe Semenza is a reporter for the Advocate. Contact him at 361-580-6519 or gsemenza@vicad.com.
Today’s symposium
Events today begin at 9 a.m. at the Alcorn Auditorium, University of Houston-Victoria University West building
9 - 9:30 a.m.Coffee
9:30 - 10:30 a.m.“The Mexican-American Experience through Film”
10:30 - 10:45 a.m.Break
10:45 - 11:45 a.m. “Mothers, Martyrs & Mamacitas: (Re)presenting NosOtras in Film”