A new documentary reconnecting Farmersville with a forgotten chapter of its past will premiere at the Farmersville Boys & Girls Club this weekend.
“From, Farmersville,” a documentary by Savannah Gasca, will be shown at 6 p.m. on Saturday, May 30, at the Boys & Girls Club, 623 N. Avery Ave., Farmersville.
The film focuses on the city and how it was once the subject of the “Farmersville Film Project,” a series of films made by the government in the 1960s to support progress in the community.
“The documentary explores how the community’s present compares with expectations of voices from its past,” explained Gasca who grew up in Farmersville.
Gasca, a recent cinematic arts graduate from Cal State Long Beach with an emphasis in documentary filmmaking, was intrigued when she heard about the film series. Even though it inspired her work, she doesn’t think it accomplished much for the city.
“All of those films are just the people in the community saying, ‘I wish we had this,’ or, ‘The community needs to build up in this way,’” she said. “I believe that they showed the films to the community, and it was meant to really connect them because there were a lot of people coming from the Dust Bowl, and then immigrants coming from Mexico. The office that produced these films, the Office of Economic Opportunity, was disbanded under Reagan.
“These films were just lost, and the whole idea of using film as a communication tool was just forgotten,” she said. “I only knew about these films because my dad said that my great-grandpa was in them.”
The 11-minute documentary is not online yet because of its current film festival commitments, but it has been submitted to “PBS Fine Cut.”
Gasca expects it to eventually appear online on Vimeo or a similar website. The film screening is open to the public and will also feature several films by Farmersville High School students.
This article originally appeared on Visalia Times-Delta: ‘From, Farmersville’ documentary uncovers forgotten past
Reporting by Steve Pastis, Visalia Times-Delta / Visalia Times-Delta
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