Maquilapolis: City of Factories - Cameron Case

One of the things that really resonated with me in this piece was how much these companies and factories fed off of the workers ignorance. To start with many of these places were hiring people they knew where not fully aware of what type of job they were signing up for, therefore they could easily do with them what they wanted. The companies would continue to keep their workers ignorant by not telling them when the factory was going to be closing(which was the center for the legal battle with Sonya). As well as not making them aware of the health risks involved with their jobs(not to mention the risks that spread to their communities), one of the most striking things to me was how many of the women in the film talked about the presence of led as if it was a natural consequence to being employed; sometimes the led amount will be good, sometimes it will be bad, but it seemed that there will always be led. None of these workers are ever given the knowledge of these things and thus can never be able to have a voice about them. This all contributes to the larger point of the documentary which also resonated very strongly with me which was workers as commodities, not as actual people. All these women were to these companies was cheap and easy labor and there was no thought as to what effect these factories had on their lives outside of them. The filmmakers really effectively showed this through the film by pairing these women with image of their factory lives. For example when they showed only their heads slowly spinning in a circle as they said the names of the companies they worked for and those names appeared around them; slowly crowding their space. Another very effective occurrence of this was the moments when they showed the women either holding or next to the objects that they used to make in the factory, showing how these corporate, capitalistic items are tied to their identities; they cannot seem to exist without them in this system. Overall I think it was a very effective tactic for the filmmaker to deal so closely with these women, making the piece into a kind of video journal. It made the documentary very personal and it helped to make sure that an artistic lense or input was not overlayed with the film which I think wouldn't of made it as genuine.
The score was also very effective for me, the mixture of different mechanical, factory sounds created a very powerful soundscape for the piece.