More than 160 films will be featured in the upcoming San Diego Latino Film Festival with one of them being produced by Chula Vista resident and former journalist Laura Castaneda.
Castaneda’s five-minute documentary film “Maid in America” is about a woman who left her children behind in Tijuana/Rosarito to come to the United States to care for other children and perform domestic work.
Castaneda, a San Diego Community College media professor, collaborated on the project with Daniela Porter, one of her former students.
In the film the woman is given the name Olivia to protect her identity since she only has a tourist visa and cannot legally work in the United States, Castaneda said.
“When you’re crossing the border and you have a tourist visa in your hand and you know that you’re crossing over to work, that is a very scary situation every time you cross that border because it is an offense, it’s illegal and if you get caught you could face jail time and fines,” she said. “It’s not something to be taken lightly. People put themselves at risk to help their families.”
Castaneda said she hopes to secure enough funding for “Maid in America” to create a longer documentary that tells the stories of three different women who have left their homes and children behind to work across the border.
“The untold story in all of this is that they’re really sacrificing their relationships with their own children because they are leaving them behind to come here and work and be domestic caregivers and house cleaners because they need to financially,” she said. “So that’s what this one story is about. We just told the story of one woman.”
Castaneda said she funded a portion of this project on her own and received $1,000 as part of a KPBS project. Initially, “Maid in America” was submitted to KPBS for a KPBS Explorer series. The film was a semi-finalist but did not get picked up by KPBS.
“Maid in America” is Castaneda’s fourth credited film and her first film in 10 years.
Her last film “The Devil’s Breath” a 40-minute documentary film about the undocumented people who died in the 2007 San Diego wildfires was also featured in the San Diego Latino Film Festival in 2008.
The former reporter has years covering border related issues in California and Arizona. She said she has come across a lot of untold stories that she has learned about and feels the need to tell their stories like she did with “Maid in America.”
Castaneda said what attracted her to tell Olivia’s story was something she said during an interview. She said Olivia told her that when her son was younger and she had to go to work she had to peel him off of her every time because he knew she would be gone for four to five days without seeing her.
Castaneda said first heard about Olivia’s story from a friend of a friend.
Castaneda said she and Porter put in close to 100 hours of production which include interviews, shooting, editing, getting music, displaying graphics and subtitles and traveling back and forth across the border.
Castaneda said working on a documentary is a little different than broadcasting news.
“I’m used to telling a full-on story (for a news segment) in 90 seconds,” she said. “That’s what I love about documentary film making and longer format is that you have more time to get into details to be able to tell the story.”
