![\"Mackenzie](\"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/office-undergraduate-research\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/319\/2000_mackenzie_baradic_20220208-600x400.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Like many Arizonans, for Baradic, the immigration crisis at the US\u2013Mexico border is right in her backyard.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been surrounded by this issue since I was about five,\u201d says Baradic. Growing up in Phoenix, she began to learn the nuances of immigration through her mother, who teaches English as a second language in a public high school.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe works with migrants, refugees from Mexico, Guatemala, everywhere, anywhere. But the funny thing about my mom is that she doesn\u2019t speak Spanish, so I often had to translate for her,\u201d Baradic says. Translating for her mother opened Baradic\u2019s eyes to the bewildering web of logistics that hampers immigration to the US. Baradic observed \u201cconstant systemic pressures and problems that are completely unfair to people of any age, especially 15-year-olds just trying to go to school.\u201d<\/p>\n
Drawing inspiration from her upbringing, Baradic decided to be part of the solution. At NAU, she sharpened her language skills with a\u00a0minor in Spanish<\/a>\u00a0and focused her senior capstone project on documenting the immigration crisis in the Sonoran desert. With help from the Jean Shuler research\u00a0mini-grant<\/a>, Baradic produced a film entitled\u00a0Borderlands<\/em>, which chronicles the efforts of humanitarian volunteers deep in southern Arizona to help migrants survive the dangerous desert crossing.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are looking at how the Prevention Through Deterrence strategy has forced migrants into completely uninhabitable areas of the desert, and what that actually means,\u201d says Baradic. \u201cI\u2019m not going to lie; it\u2019s pretty intense.\u201d As migrants travel through the desert, they face dire threats, including illegal drug traffickers, rattlesnakes, and a dangerous lack of water. Baradic\u2019s documentary focuses on the lethal effects of dehydration.<\/p>\n The testimonies featured in\u00a0Borderlands<\/em>\u00a0come from the humanitarians who leave water in the desert, provide food and shelter near popular border crossings, or find and rescue lost migrants. According to Baradic, these activists are incredibly diverse, ranging from punks to professors and veterans to students.<\/p>\n \u201cThe variety of stories I\u2019ve heard\u2014it\u2019s insane how many branches there are to this tree,\u201d she says. Beyond interviews,\u00a0Borderlands<\/em>\u00a0will also document boots on the ground as Baradic and crew assist humanitarian aid efforts. This means hiking fifteen miles into the desert, carrying water, and watching for rattlesnakes, narcos, and human remains. These raw experiences, originally just part of the filmmaking process, changed Baradic\u2019s outlook.<\/p>\n \u201cYou realize that you are not so significant anymore, and your life is nowhere near as precious as you thought it was,\u201d she says. \u201cYour purpose is not to sit at home and earn your film degree; it\u2019s to actually do something about the atrocities that are happening three hours from where you live.\u201d<\/p>\n In many ways, Baradic felt empowered to take her filmmaking seriously due to the mentorship of\u00a0Kurt Lancaster<\/a>, professor in NAU\u2019s School of Communication. \u201cAs long as you put in the work, Dr. Lancaster will keep working with you and help you achieve whatever it is that you want to achieve,\u201d she says. After excelling in his Cinematic Storytelling class, Baradic collaborated with Lancaster in the\u00a0Interns-to-Scholars<\/a>\u00a0program, ultimately presenting their joint research at a conference in Wilmington, North Carolina. This April, Baradic will be showing the documentary at NAU\u2019s\u00a0Undergraduate Research Symposium<\/a>.<\/p>\n For Baradic, this documentary is exactly what she wants to focus on in her career: the tough subjects, the ones that make people uncomfortable. And, ultimately, she hopes her work will improve lives by empowering underrepresented people to tell their stories.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m going to be doing absolutely everything that I can to amplify the migrants\u2019 voices,\u201d says Baradic. \u201cI\u2019ve worked really hard to get to where I am right now and to be in a position where I actually can do something about it, instead of just sitting around.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Filming Arizona\u2019s immigration crisis Creative Media and Film\u00a0major Mackenzie Baradic is documenting the stories of migrants, and those who help them, as they risk their lives to cross the Sonoran desert. Like many Arizonans, for Baradic, the immigration crisis at the US\u2013Mexico border is right in her backyard. \u201cI\u2019ve been surrounded by this issue since […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"parent":15,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","_oasis_is_in_workflow":0,"_oasis_original":0,"_oasis_task_priority":"","ring_central_script_selection":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-4489","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/office-undergraduate-research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/office-undergraduate-research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/office-undergraduate-research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/office-undergraduate-research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/office-undergraduate-research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4489"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/office-undergraduate-research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4499,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/office-undergraduate-research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4489\/revisions\/4499"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/office-undergraduate-research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/15"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/office-undergraduate-research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Mackenzie](\"https:\/\/legacy.nau.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/179\/2022\/02\/1798_mackenzie_baradic_20220208-1024x683.jpg\")