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Immigration Studies

HAMTRAMCK, USA

By Razi Jafri, Justin Feltman

Once a city that was 90% Polish, Hamtramck became the first Muslim majority city in America. Now, this new wave of immigrants aim to gain representation in city hall.

HAMTRAMCK, USA follows Kamal Rahman, a Bangladeshi candidate for Mayor, Fadel al-Marsoumi, a 23 year old Iraqiimmigrant running for City Council, as well as the current mayor, Karen Majewski, Hamtramck's first female mayor in the city's 100 year lineage of Polish mayors. Throughout the election, candidates look to build support, coalitions, and partnerships across ethnic and religious lines.

Weaved into the election season, the film showcases the vibrant life, celebrations, and culture of those who call this cityhome. At the end of the election, regardless of who ultimately wins, Hamtramck will need to come together, with a new identity or the remaining fragments of the past, to face the many challenges ahead

DVD / 2020 / 89 minutes

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HOME CALLED NEBRASKA, A

Directed by Beth Gage, George Gage

People in Nebraska wholeheartedly welcome refugees and show that the newcomers enrich their communities, their economies, and their lives.

In 2020, with America's Refugee Resettlement Program hanging by a thread, A HOME CALLED NEBRASKA is the story of midwestern welcome, acceptance, and unlikely friendships during a time of national anxiety and emboldened bigotry. In 2016, the conservative state of Nebraska resettled more refugees per capita than any other state.

A HOME CALLED NEBRASKA spotlights people who escaped war, torture and persecution. It also introduces the generous Nebraskans who welcomed them, taught them, celebrated with them, and helped them find jobs and houses. Today these refugees are succeeding, and are giving back to the communities that supported them.

This heartwarming documentary by Beth and George Gage (American Outrage, Bidder 70) offers hope and an antidote to racist nationalism: communities of people in Nebraska who work to dispel fear, build bridges and change their own perceptions along the way. Here is a compelling portrait of ordinary people standing up for what is right, inspiring us to do the same.

DVD / 2020 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adults) / 69 minutes

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SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME, A

By Lisa Marie Malloy And J.P. Sniadecki

Sundog lives out in the Sonora Desert on the Mexican border. He is an elderly gentleman, who lives off anything that the brutal nature gives him, be it a wild boar or the psychedelic poison of a toad. 'A Shape of Things to Come' gives precedence to the sensory materiality of the desert instead of to explanations and dialogue, and moves beyond the human scale and down to animal perspectives.

It creates a world that stretches from a distant past in the ecological movements of the 1960s to a possible future in the aftermath of the apocalypse. But the border patrol agents are threatening the peace in Sundog's desert kingdom, which the armed recluse is prepared to defend.

With the desert as the ultimate existential (and cinematic) setting, the film shows the relationship between humanity and nature at a critical time, when civil disobedience is the provocative answer to the most pressing questions.

DVD / 2020 / 77 minutes

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STATELESS

By Michele Stephenson

Through the grassroots campaign of attorney Rosa Iris, STATELESS reveals the depths of racial hatred and institutionalized oppression that divide Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

In 1937, tens of thousands of Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent were exterminated by the Dominican army, based on anti-black hatred fomented by the Dominican government. Fast-forward to 2013, the Dominican Republic's Supreme Court stripped the citizenship of anyone with Haitian parents, retroactive to 1929. The ruling rendered more than 200,000 people stateless, without nationality, identity or a homeland. In this dangerous climate, a young attorney named Rosa Iris mounts a grassroots campaign, challenging electoral corruption and advocating for social justice. Director Michèle Stephenson's new documentary Stateless traces the complex tributaries of history and present-day politics, as state-sanctioned racism seeps into mundane offices, living room meetings, and street protests. At a time when extremist ideologies are gaining momentum in the U.S. and around the world, STATELESS is a warning of what can happen in a society when racism runs rampant in the government.

Filmed with a chiaroscuro effect and richly imbued with elements of magical realism, Stateless combines gritty hidden-camera footage with the legend of a young woman fleeing brutal violence to flip the narrative axis, revealing the depths of institutionalized oppression.

DVD (Spanish, Haitian Creole, Color, Closed Captioned) / 2020 / 96 minutes

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UNIVERSALITY OF IT ALL, THE

By Andres Bronnimann

A feature-length documentary that focuses on the topics of human migration and inequality, blurring the boundaries between film and documentary through a fresh and nuanced perspective.

The film is as intimate, as it is informative as it explains the complexity of human migration by providing valuable data and information, but also by showing how it affects the reality of two friends and their day-to-day lives.

DVD / 2020 / 90 minutes

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WAYS OF BEING HOME

Directed by Cecilia Cornejo

An evocative audiovisual meditation on the experience of Mexican immigrants living and working in rural America.

This intimate cinematic portrait of two small towns - one in Mexico and one in Minnesota - is an evocative audiovisual meditation on the experience of Mexican immigrants living and working in rural America. Vivid cinematography, richly layered soundscapes, short animated sequences, and a constellation of testimonies introduce audiences to Maltrata, an agricultural town nestled in the mountains of Veracruz, Mexico, and to Northfield, a college town in southern Minnesota where many Maltratans have immigrated and settled. By means of a nonlinear narrative and a camera that thoughtfully yet viscerally meanders between everyday scenes in both towns, Chilean-American director Cecilia Cornejo Sotelo (dir. I WONDER WHAT YOU WILL REMEMBER OF SEPTEMBER) shows the complexities of, and contrasts between, these places.

Filmed amidst increasing violence and political unrest in Mexico and the rising anti-immigrant sentiment that took hold during and after the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the voices of fiercely determined and hard-working women coalesce to offer a nuanced portrait of a transnational community. Ultimately, the film is a testament to the resiliency and ingenuity of uprooted people as they craft a life and a home fostered by ritual, relationship, and community rather than solely by geography.

DVD (Color, Closed Captioned) / 2020 / 72 minutes

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BORDER SOUTH

Directed by Raul O. Paz Pastrana

Reveals the resilience, ingenuity and humor of Central American immigrants while exposing a global migration system that renders human beings invisible in life as well as death.

To stem the immigration tide, Mexico and the US collaborate to crack down on migrants, forcing them into ever more dangerous territory.

Every year hundreds of thousands of migrants make their way along the trail running from southern Mexico to the US border. Gustavo's gunshot wounds from Mexican police, which received a lot of press attention, might just earn him a ticket out of Nicaragua. Meanwhile anthropologist Jason De Leon painstakingly collects objects left behind by migrants on the trail, which have their own stories to tell. These remains, from Hondurans crossing through southern Mexico, reveal a vivid portrait of the thousands of immigrants who disappear along the trail.

DVD / 2019 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adults) / 83 minutes

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DAY ONE

Directed by Lori Miller

Traumatized Middle Eastern and African teen refugees are guided through a program of healing by devoted educators at a unique St. Louis public school for refugees only.

DAY ONE follows a group of teenage refugees from war-torn countries who are enrolled at a unique public school for refugees and immigrants-only in St. Louis, MO, where they are guided through an inspirational program of education, healing and trauma intervention by devoted educators, some of whom have chosen to relocate to the inner city to support their students.

Over the course of a year, we watch the kids progress through layers of grief and loss as they attend school, forge new friendships, and prepare to be mainstreamed into local public high schools. Their triumphs and tribulations all unfold with St. Louis as the backdrop: a rust-belt city that has taken the bold step of welcoming immigrants as a solution for their growing socio-economic problems.

DVD / 2019 / (Grades 6-12, College, Adults) / 82 minutes

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VITALINA VARELA

By Pedro Costa

Portuguese director Pedro Costa has continually returned in his films to the Fontainhas neighborhood, a shantytown on the outskirts of Lisbon that's home to largely immigrant communities. Not merely a chronicler of the poor and dispossessed, Costa renders onscreen characters that exist somewhere between real and fictional, the living and the dead.

His latest, a film of deeply concentrated beauty, stars nonprofessional actor Vitalina Varela in a truly remarkable performance. Reprising and expanding upon her haunted supporting role from Costa's Horse Money, she plays a Cape Verdean woman who has come to Fontainhas for her husband's funeral after being separated from him for decades due to economic circumstance, and despite her alienation begins to establish a new life there.

The grief of the present and the ghosts of the past commingle in Costa's ravishing chiaroscuro compositions, a film of shadow and whisper that might be the director's most visually extraordinary work. (synopsis courtesy of the New York Film Festival)

DVD / 2019 / 124 minutes

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BIRTH ON THE BORDER

By Ellie Lobovits

This intimate and personal documentary follows two women from Ciudad Juarez as they cross the U.S.-Mexico border legally to give birth in Texas, putting their hearts and bodies on the line as they confront harassment at the hands of U.S. border officials.

One million people legally cross the U.S.-Mexico border every day in both directions. Among them are women who cross for the purposes of childbirth. With the threat of obstetrical violence in Mexican hospitals and the desire for natural birth with midwives, Gaby and Luisa make the difficult decision to cross the border to El Paso, seeking a safer future for their children. Even with papers, their journeys are uncertain.

Against the backdrop of oppressive U.S. border policy and growing debates over immigration, these women's stories of risk, strength, and resilience shed light on the realities and challenges of life on the border.

DVD (English, Spanish, Color, Closed Captioned) / 2018 / 28 minutes

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COLOSSUS

Director: Jonathan Schienberg

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" - from The New Colossus, by Emma Lazarus

Told through the eyes of 15-year-old Jamil Sunsin, Colossus is a modern-day immigrant tale of one family's desperate struggle after deportation leads to family separation, and the elusive search for the American dream.

Jamil is the only person in his family born in the U.S. His parents and sister came from Honduras and lived in America for a decade before Jamil's father was arrested for being undocumented. The entire family was forced to return to Honduras, a country wracked with violence. After a knife attack traumatizes Jamil, his family makes an excruciating choice to send him back to the U.S. alone.

Now 15, Jamil tries to survive without his family and fights against a broken immigration system. Back in Honduras, his sister Mirka, who would've been eligible for DACA had she remained in the U.S., hopes to someday reunite with Jamil. This intimate portrait is a rare look into the aftermath of deportation and family separation, amidst the current backlash against America's immigrants.

DVD (English, Spanish, With English Subtitles) / 2018 / 84 minutes

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HAVANA DIVAS

Directed by S. Louisa Wei

Offering a window into the experience of Chinese migration to Cuba, HAVANA DIVAS follows two Cantonese opera singers who perform for decades in Cuba before, and during, Fidel Castro's revolution.

Stage-sisters Caridad Amaran and Georgina Wong, both of Chinese descent, learned the art of Cantonese opera from their fathers in Havana, Cuba in the 1930s. Caridad's Chinese foster father immigrated to Cuba in the 1920s after his family forbade him to perform opera. Georgina's father was a famous tailor in a Havana Chinatown, who encouraged her to learn kung-fu and traditional Chinese dance. The daughters spent their youth performing throughout Havana and among other notable singers until their lives were changed by Fidel Castro's revolution. In their golden years, the two sisters attempt to revive Cantonese opera in a worn-out Cuban Chinatown and, together, make a new wish: to return to their fathers' Chinese homelands to pay their respects.

HAVANA DIVAS offers a window into over 170 years of Chinese migration to Cuba. Through present-day interviews, precious photographs, and archival footage, director S. Louisa Wei explores the shifting culture of Cantonese opera through a historical time and place. The film reveals the female spirit of the two stage sisters and makes an important contribution to a growing body of films documenting female artists and performers within the Chinese Diaspora.

DVD (Spanish, With English and Chinese Subtitles, Color, Closed Captioned) / 2018 / 96 minutes

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SOUNDS OF IMMIGRATION

Directors: Yael Kipper & Ronen Zaretzky

A cinematic-literary look at the lives of immigrants, who came to Israel over the course of 20 years, all residents of Block 461 in Maalot-Tarshiha, a mixed city in the North of Israel. The film observes the lives of people who immigrated from Russia and are still searching for their place, people who fled Lebanon 14 years ago when they were children and are just starting to realize how complex their lives are, and young people from the community of ''Bnei Menashe'', Kuki people who just arrived from Manipur, India on the Myanmar border, and moved directly to Maalot. The film presents a dialogue between cinematographic expression and a literary text written by Israeli novelist Sara Shilo.

DVD (Hebrew, Arabic, Russian, Hindi, With English Subtitles) / 2018 / 82 minutes

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THIS IS HOME: A REFUGEE STORY

Directed by Alexandra Shiva

Sundance award-winner puts a human face on the global refugee crisis by providing an intimate portrait of four Syrian refugees arriving in the US and struggling to find their footing.

THIS IS HOME is an intimate portrait of four Syrian refugee families arriving in America and struggling to find their footing. With only eight months of help from the International Rescue Committee to become self-sufficient, they must forge ahead to rebuild their lives in a new home: Baltimore, Maryland. They attend cultural orientation classes and job training sessions where they must "learn America" -- everything from how to take public transportation to negotiating new gender roles.

When the newly imposed travel ban adds further questions and complications, their strength and resilience are put to the test. Through humor and heartbreak, this universal story illuminates what it's like to start over, no matter the obstacles. THIS IS HOME goes beyond the statistics, headlines, and political rhetoric to tell deeply personal stories, putting a human face on the global refugee crisis.

DVD / 2018 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adults) / 91 minutes

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STILL WATERS

Directed by Peter Gordon

In his tiny, one-room, after hours, free school in Brooklyn, Stephen Haff teaches forty Hispanic kids reading, creative writing and Latin.

A remarkable one-room school in Brooklyn is facing a tough year. It's the run up to the US presidential election and anti-Latino rhetoric is ramped up--an extra source of tension for a hard-pressed Hispanic community already threatened by gentrification and eviction.

The school, Still Waters in a Storm, is the creation of Yale grad Stephen Haff. A passionate critic of mainstream education, he believes in the joy of learning without tests and the innate creativity of children and insists that the school is free. It survives precariously on the thinnest of shoestrings.

When regular school finishes, Still Waters starts working. Stephen and his group of children explore, with the help of illustrious guest writers like twice Booker Prizewinner Peter Carey, the power of storytelling, creativity and community. And along the way they discuss Donald Trump and gentrification with humor and passion.

Filmed over a year STILL WATERS follows this compelling man, his philosophy, the spirit of the children who attend, and the dreams and fears of their immigrant Hispanic community.

DVD / 2017 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adults) / 79 minutes

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BABYLON DREAMERS

Director: Roman Shumunov

Headspins, windmills, and b-boying: a group of immigrants from the former Soviet Union form a breakdancing troupe in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Israel. They dream of competing in the International Breakdancing Competition in Germany, but the road is paved with hardship and crisis. Lacking an instructor, they learn moves from videotapes and move one step closer to their goal.

DVD (Russian, Hebrew, English, With English Subtitles) / 2016 / 90 minutes

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EAST OF SALINAS

Directed by Laura Pacheco, Jackie Mow

Jose Anzaldo is an excellent student with a bright future except that he is undocumented, the child of migrant farm laborers in California's Salinas Valley.

EAST OF SALINAS begins with 3rd grader Jose Anzaldo telling us what he wants to be when he grows up. His parents work from sun up to sun down in the heart of California's "Steinbeck Country," the Salinas Valley. With little support available at home, Jose often turns to his teacher, Oscar Ramos, once a migrant farm kid himself. In fourth grade his teacher told him if he worked hard he could have a different life. Oscar won a scholarship to the University of California, Berkeley. The day he earned his degree, he bought a car and drove home to the fields. He's been teaching ever since.

Jose is Oscar's most gifted student. But how do you teach students like Jose who have no place to do their homework? How do you teach a kid who moves every few months? This is what Oscar is up against every day. Oscar not only teaches his students reading, math and science, he gives them access to a world beyond their reach.

But Jose was born in Mexico--and he's on the cusp of understanding the implications of that. As we watch this play out over three years, we begin to understand the cruelty of circumstance--for Jose and the many millions of undocumented kids like him.

EAST OF SALINAS asks, What is lost when kids like Jose are denied opportunities?

DVD / 2015 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adults) / 53 minutes

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HAND THAT FEEDS, THE

Directed by Rachel Lears, Robin Blotnick

Shy sandwich-maker Mahoma Lopez unites his undocumented immigrant coworkers to fight abusive conditions at a popular New York restaurant chain.

At a popular bakery cafe, residents of New York's Upper East Side get bagels and coffee served with a smile 24 hours a day. But behind the scenes, undocumented immigrant workers face sub-legal wages, dangerous machinery, and abusive managers who will fire them for calling in sick. Mild-mannered sandwich maker Mahoma Lopez has never been interested in politics, but in January 2012, he convinces a small group of his co-workers to fight back.

Risking deportation and the loss of their livelihood, the workers team up with a diverse crew of innovative young organizers and take the unusual step of forming their own independent union, launching themselves on a journey that will test the limits of their resolve. In one roller-coaster year, they must overcome a shocking betrayal and a two-month lockout. Lawyers will battle in back rooms, Occupy Wall Street protesters will take over the restaurant, and a picket line will divide the neighborhood. If they can win a contract, it will set a historic precedent for low-wage workers across the country. But whatever happens, Mahoma and his coworkers will never be exploited again.

DVD / 2014 / (Grades 10-12, College, Adult) / 84 minutes

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RED LEAVES

By Bazi Gete

"Red Leaves" examines the life of a man, Meseganio Tadela (Debebe Eshetu), a 74-year-old recent widower and Ethiopian immigrant. Following the death of his wife, Meseganio sells his apartment and plans on living the rest of his days alternately living with the families of his sons. However, once put into practice, he discovers that his hard-lined traditional values are challenged by family members.

Meseganio Tadela immigrated to Israel from Ethiopia 28 years ago with his family. He chose to zealously retain his culture, talks very little, and hardly speaks Hebrew. After losing his wife, Meseganio sets out on a journey that leads him through his children's homes. He comes to realize that he belongs to a rapidly disappearing class that believes in retaining Ethiopian culture. As this harsh reality begins to hit him, he struggles to survive according to his own rules.

DVD (Amharic with English Subtitles) / 2014 / 80 minutes

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SEARCH FOR GENERAL TSO, THE

Directed by Ian Cheney

A quest to understand the origins of this ubiquitous, spicy red chicken dish and to explore the history of Chinese-American food.

This mouthwateringly entertaining film travels the globe to unravel a captivating culinary mystery. General Tso's Chicken is a staple of Chinese-American cooking, and a ubiquitous presence on restaurant menus across the country. But just who was General Tso? And how did his chicken become emblematic of an entire national cuisine?

Director Ian Cheney journeys from Shanghai to New York to the American Midwest and beyond to uncover the origins of this iconic dish, turning up surprising revelations and a host of humorous characters along the way. Told with the verve of a good detective story, THE SEARCH FOR GENERAL TSO is as much about food as it is a tale of the American immigrant experience.

DVD / 2014 / (Grades 7-12, College, Adults) / 73 minutes

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BACK TO CASABLANCA (SON OF THE LAND)

Director: Sigalit Banai

Israeli actor and director Ze'ev Revach was born in Morocco in 1940. He sets out on a journey back to Casablanca, in search of a Moroccan actor to star alongside him in his next film, which he dreams that he'll be able to distribute around the Arab world. He connects with his mother tongue, discovers the commonalities between the two cultures, but his mission is not a simple one. Revach's heart sways between Diaspora and Homeland, between authentic and imagined Moroccan belonging and between the script of the dream and the reality.

DVD (Hebrew, French, Arabic, With English Subtitles) / 2012 / 50 minutes

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LEAST OF THESE, THE (FAMILY DETENTION IN AMERICA)

By Jesse Lyda and Clark Lyda

THE LEAST OF THESE takes a penetrating look at the T. Don Hutto Residential Center, a former medium-security prison that re-opened in 2006 as a prototype family detention center.

The facility houses immigrant children and their parents from all over the world who are awaiting asylum hearings or deportation proceedings. As information about troubling conditions at the facility began to leak out, activist attorneys sought to investigate and address the issues. In telling the story of their quest, the film explores the role (and limits) of community and legal activism in bringing about change. The film leads viewers to consider how core American rights and values-protection of children, presumption of innocence, upholding the family structure as the basic unit of civil society, and America as a refuge of last resort-should apply to immigrants, particularly children.

DVD (English and Spanish with English Subtitles) / 2009 / 82 minutes

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WHICH WAY HOME - ORIGINAL

Directed by Rebecca Cammisa

The personal side of immigration as child migrants from Mexico and Central America risk everything to make it to the US riding atop freight trains.

As the United States continues to build a wall between itself and Mexico, WHICH WAY HOME shows the personal side of immigration through the eyes of children who face harrowing dangers with enormous courage and resourcefulness as they endeavor to make it to the United States.

The film follows several unaccompanied child migrants as they journey through Mexico en route to the U.S. on a freight train they call " The Beast." Director Rebecca Cammisa ("Sister Helen") tracks the stories of children like Olga and Freddy, nine-year old Hondurans who are desperately trying to reach their families in Minnesota, and Jose, a ten-year-old El Salvadoran who has been abandoned by smugglers and ends up alone in a Mexican detention center, and focuses on Kevin, a canny, streetwise 14-year-old Honduran, fleeing an abusive stepfather, and whose mother hopes that he will reach New York City and send money back to his family. These are stories of hope and courage, disappointment and sorrow. They are the ones you never hear about - the invisible ones.

DVD / 2009 / (Grades 9-12, College, Adult) / 83 minutes

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