The Harvest (La Cosecha) (2011)

The story of the children who work 12-14 hour days in the fields without the protection of child labor laws. These children are not toiling in the fields in some far away land. They are working in America.

Date of release
2011-07-29
TMDB
8.5 / 10 (4)
Runtime
1h 20m
Genres
Documentary
Director
U. Roberto Romano

Interesting facts

The Harvest is a 2010 documentary film about agricultural child labor in America. The film depicts children as young as 12 years of age who work as many as 12 hours a day, six months a year, subject to hazardous conditions: heat exposure, pesticides, and dangerous work. The agriculture industry has been subject to significantly more lenient labor laws than any other occupation in the United States. As a result, lack of consistent schooling significantly limits their opportunities of succeeding in high school or more. The hazardous conditions threaten their health and lives.

Production

The Harvest is a feature documentary film on the life of migrant children and their families in the United States. It revisits Edward R. Murrow’s Harvest of Shame, filmed 53 years ago, and reveals that little has changed over the past five decades in the lives of migrant farm workers in the United States.

The film profiles several children and their families as they work through the 2009–2010 harvest seasons, facing risks of being separated, deported or death. A twelve-year-old girl, Zulema L., works in a field of strawberries. One of her earliest memories is being taught by her mother to pick and clean strawberries. Zulema struggles academically because of the family's seasonal movement. She has attended eight different schools in eight years.

Work began on the documentary in June 2007 and through the 2009–2010 harvests. In that time the project has followed harvests in Minnesota, North Dakota, Texas, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Ohio. The documentary was shot with cinematic scope. Post-production began in early winter 2010, with the completion of the film in fall 2010.

The Harvest was produced by Shine Global in association with Globalvision, Romano Film and Photography, and Eva Longoria's UnbeliEVAble Productions. Longoria signed on as an executive producer of the project in 2009. It was directed by U. Roberto (Robin) Romano, photographer of Faces of Freedom.

The Harvest premiered at the International Documentary Film Festival IDFA in Amsterdam in November 2010, and at the Guadalajara International Film Festival in Guadalajara, Mexico on March 26, 2011. Distributed by Cinema Libre, The film had its theatrical debut in New York City on July 29, 2011, and became available on DVD October 2011.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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