Okanagan plucks strange fruit

Carleton graduate Marc Arellano is about to see the fruit of two years of labour brought to the big screen. This July, the Okanagan Film Festival will showcase Strange Fruit: A changing landscape in the Central Okanagan, a film Arellano, MA/94, made to document the challenges family run orchards face in the region.

Arellano was inspired to make the film in reaction to the rezoning of agricultural land to residential properties and hostile reactions within the Central Okanagan community toward Mexican migrant workers and Jamaican students.  The film tackles issues surrounding land, labour and water.

After completing his MA in English, Arellano first concentrated on writing poetry. A decade later he began to write communications and marketing pieces for a cycling company. With the advent of the web, he began to produce short video clips and distributed these via the company’s web site. However, his epiphany came when he saw the employee reaction to a documentary he’d made for a company anniversary party.

“When I saw how powerful moving images can be, I decided to pursue storytelling in a digital medium,” said Arellano. “I see myself as a storyteller. What I love to do is combine language, images and sound to evoke emotions in others.”

The first story he told was in the form of a short documentary that looped back and forth in time, weaving old home movies with recent footage of his dad, an immigrant from Bolivia. Entitled, kə nā′�dē�ən, the film explores Canadian’s perceptions of identity. It placed in the top 10 of an international film competition sponsored by CBC radio.