Troubled Harvest

A film by Sharon Genasci and Dorothy Velasco

1990 | 30 minutes | Color | DVD | Order No. 99185

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SYNOPSIS

This award-winning documentary examines the lives of women migrant workers from Mexico and Central America as they work in grape, strawberry and cherry harvests in California and the Pacific Northwest. Interviews with women farm workers reveal the dangerous health effects of pesticides on themselves and their children, the problems they encounter as working mothers of young children, and the destructive consequences of U.S. immigration policies on the unity of their families. Featuring an interview with Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers Union.

PRESS

“An important contribution…Unlike many environmental films, Troubled Harvest underscores the multi-faceted levels of environmental degradation and its effects on women.”

Ariel Dougherty Author, Safe PlanetMedia Network Guide to Environmental Film and Video

SCREENING HIGHLIGHTS AND AWARDS

Houston Int‘l Film Festival, Silver Award

ABOUT FILMMAKER(S)

Sharon Genasci

Sharon Genasci has been producing award winning documentaries since 1979. She graduated with a Masters in Film & Television Studies from NYU in 1981, and then established Rainbow Video & Film Productions, mainly producing programs independently for PBS affiliates. Titles include, I'd Rather Be a Cowboy, Troubled Harvest, Railroad Women, Inert Alert: Secret Poisons in Pesticides, The Torch is Passed, Logging Siberia, The Water in Our Backyard and What's In Our Air?, Peru: Tapestry of Biodiversity.

Before making films she attended London School of Economics, where she obtained a Diploma in Community Work, and then ran a program for five years, teaching video to high-school age students. Her first documentary, Company Town was produced in 1979. She has won many awards, including a Gold at the Houston International Film Festival for What's in Our Air?. Her documentaries have been screened at festivals in England and Brazil, and shown on the BBC, and on Russian television, as well as on PBS affiliates throughout the United States. (12/07)

Dorothy Velasco

Dorothy Velasco has written over thirty plays produced around the United States and in Canada, Mexico and London. Recent productions include the musical, Cowgirl Heaven, Pigs in Love and several ten-minute plays. Miracle in Memphis (formerly Miracle at Graceland) had numerous productions and won national competitions. A musical version played at Oregon Cabaret Theatre in Ashland and was published by Samuel French, Inc. Visions won regional competitions and enjoyed a mainstage run at Artists Repertory Theatre in Portland. Her outdoor drama, Oregon Fever, played for eleven summers at Oregon City.

Velasco co-authored the feature film, Raising Flagg, starring Alan Arkin, and wrote and co-produced several award-winning video documentaries, including The Roads Less Taken (narrated by Ken Kesey), about cutoffs from the Oregon Trail. She has received an Oregon Institute of Literary Arts Playwriting Fellowship, an Oregon Individual Artist Fellowship, Eugene Arts Foundation Arts & Letters Award and the John Alvord Award for Service to the Arts. (8/14)

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