The arduous task of tree planting and the migrant workers who do it is the subject of "A Thousand Pines," which will screen at 3 p.m. Saturday during the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival.
The movie, directed by Noam Osband and Sebastián Díaz, follows a crew of migrants from rural Oaxaca, Mexico, as they spend a season planting trees in the United States for Arkansas-based Superior Forestry Services Inc. The crew is led by foreman Raymundo Morales, who spent more than 20 years planting trees in the U.S. Other workers include Raymundo's cousin, Rodolfo Morales, who is in his first year of planting, and Juan Garcia, another rookie.
The men struggle with the physical demands of planting 5,000 trees a day (mostly loblolly pines) and coping with the isolation and loneliness that comes from spending the better part of a year away from loved ones back home. The paradox is that they do the job to support their families and so their children can have a better future.
The cinéma vérité-style "A Thousand Pines" is the first feature documentary to address the guest workers who power the American reforestation industry, according to Osband, and is a peek into a world many of us never see. It's also a narrative as old as humankind.
"This is a timeless story," he says. "Sacrificing for family, leaving one place to be a stranger in a strange land, is something homo sapiens have been doing forever ... . It's a very sad film; people cry at the end, but I view it as a love story in a certain way because they are doing this because they love their families."
In press materials for the film Díaz, a Mexican immigrant living in the U.S., said: "I empathize with the feelings of isolation as I, too, have navigated family emergencies with the demands of visas and distance. The footage convinced me that a subtle, artistically compelling, and yet accessible film could be made. The strong characters and intimacy of the footage have allowed us to tell a universal story with specificity, delicacy and precision, instead of generalizations."
Osband, 43, grew up in an observant Jewish family in Boston. After college he taught for the nonprofit Teach for America at Central High School in Helena-West Helena from 2003-'05 and fell in love with Arkansas. His first documentary, the 2012 short "Searcy County," was about the defunct Searcy County Livestock Auction.
He followed that in 2014 with the feature-length documentary, "Adelante," which tells the story of how Mexican immigrants helped revitalize an Irish-Catholic parish in Norristown, Pa.
"A Thousand Pines," which had its world premiere Sept. 20 at the New York Latino Film Festival, came from Osband's study of reforestation while working toward his doctorate in anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. The movie was culled mostly from 2013 footage included in his three-hour-long doctoral dissertation film on American, Canadian and Mexican tree planters. He spent more than six months on the road with Raymundo and the others while making the movie.
"My plan was to film them and plant at the same time," he says. "I did that for like two weeks and had to stop because it was impossible. Planting is such a difficult job and I wasn't getting the filming done, so I became the water boy and I would go around with a knapsack full of water bottles." (After finishing his Ph.D, he worked for two seasons planting trees in Canada.)
Osband's feelings for Arkansas remain strong. He returns pretty much annually and his two children are named after people he met here. Having "A Thousand Pines" screen in Hot Springs is a big deal for him.
"I'll probably cry," he says. "It's not hyperbole. Arkansas is really like a second home. The fact that I now have all of these friends and loved ones in Arkansas who will be there makes it very special to me."