Labour/Leisure

A place of rest, a place of leisure, the valley of Okanagan in southwest Canada welcomes tourists and their appetite for holidaymaking. Moving from a wide-angle shot of an impeccable golf course to another showing a lavish villa overlooking plantations, the film switches focus to visit and shed light on a more bitter reality. Beneath the bourgeois serenity of the villas, in the fields, an immigrant population from South America is at work. The camera moves closer and reveals the flipside of the picture, starkly observing a well-established system in which the thankless tasks are always given to those welcomed in the shadows. The farm workers, used to moving around, are at work behind the sorting lines, picking, scanning, keeping busy. What is being repeated is not simply their gestures but the pattern of a whole world. Structural racism holds firm. The gesture is clear: Labour / Leisure, the grating resonance lingers as an echo. The frontier between the two notions will not disappear. This territory is not the same for all. It offers a broad and sumptuous framing to some, and a tighter and more oppressive one to others. From the villa overlooking the plantations, privileges are constantly expanding.

Clémence Arrivé