Event

California Company Town

MARCH 2, FRIDAY AT 8PM
California Company Town
(Lee Anne Schmitt, 2008, 16mm, 76 min) Over the past 125 years, dozens of corporations such as Occidental Petroleum, Sierra Pacific and Borax Energy have bought huge parcels of land to establish their private operations, which included stores, schools and homes for their workers. In doing so, the companies superseded their roles as employers to become the towns' landlords, merchants and educators as a way to control and placate their employees. However, when the profits stopped rolling in the companies sold out or abandoned the properties, leaving detritus: industrial warehouses, dilapidated homes and businesses, clear-cut, sterile land and the occasional tourist trap. The bleached tone of the footage, meditative shots of wrecked landscapes and the deadpan narration add to the film's solemnity.