Intimidad

Mexico, 2008, 72 Minute Running Time
Program: Documentary Films
Language: Spanish English Subtitles

Producer: David Redmon, Ashley Sabin, (executive) Deborah and Dale Smith
Editor: David Redmon, Ashley Sabin
Cinematographer: David Redmon, Ashley Sabin

Cecy and Camilo Ramirez are twenty-one-year-old Mexican newlyweds who work factory jobs at the U.S. border far from their home in Santa Maria, Puebla. They’ve left their two-year-old daughter Loida with her grandparents while Camilo makes fire hydrants and Cecy sews bras for Victoria’s Secret. Their goal is to buy a piece of land and build a house on it. But their pay is so low that it looks impossible.

Documentary filmmakers Ashley Sabin and David Redmon took five years to craft this uplifting story about ordinary people who know what matters and are willing to put up with twelve-hour workdays in order to earn it. In the face of their quiet dignity, such issues as illegal immigration and corporate greed are merely subtext—if no less shocking, as when we learn that Cecy makes just eighteen cents per finished bra and that Camilo earns much more money as an ice cream vendor than as a factory worker. Instead, their story inheres in its intimate moments: Cecy laughing bitterly during a rare visit home at the fact that tiny Loida doesn’t know them anymore; Camilo weeping quietly when Cecy decides she won’t return to Reynosa with him. The disarmingly unfazed Loida treats the camera like a teasing big brother, while Cecy beams with joy at her in the modest home of her parents, despite its lack of water and lights and electricity.

A combination of Super 8 and 16mm film stock adds nuanced texture to the verité footage, whether capturing Cecy humming a lullaby in the dark or showing the festivities along the dusty main drag of Santa Maria.

Sponsors:

Consulate General of Mexico in Denver, Mexican Cultural Center Denver,
In cooperation with Coloradans for Immigrant Rights, a Project of the American Friends Service Commitee