California: Paradise Burning

The collapse of California’s Central Valley, as the region’s worst drought in recorded history enters its fourth year, is shot in artful black and white in this short film. California: Paradise Burning can’t help but evoke the Depression-era work of Walker Evans, especially given this film’s focus on the individual farmers and farmworkers who are most immediately affected by the disaster and soon to be out of work and out of business. Photographers Matt Black and Ed Kashi alternate still images with interview footage, producing a shattering portrait of an agricultural paradise, albeit an irrigated one, rapidly turning into a desert. The causes, the solutions and the broader implications are all left to the viewer’s imagination.