https://www.facebook.com/CUNYTVdigitalseries/videos/771367110040574/ Staten Island’s Huddled Masses: An Immigration Storytelling Project” features residents sharing family stories about coming to the United States, and their experiences in Staten Island as immigrants and children of immigrants. The film follows Cesar Vargas, a Staten Island attorney who arrived as an undocumented immigrant from Mexico. He was a recipient of DACA […]
Archive | Immigration
The Banned
“The Banned” takes a look at the lives of Iranian-Americans affected by the Trump administration ban restricting travel from Muslim-majority countries. The short film, directed by Ali Reza Khoshkjan and produced while he was an undergraduate student in the Brooklyn College Film Department, won the Best Editing Award at the 2019 Brooklyn College Film […]
The Fourth Kingdom
“The Fourth Kingdom” is a documentary about daily life in a bottle and can redemption center on the outskirts of New York. It’s a “Kingdom” in which both undocumented immigrants and US citizens share the mutual disappointment of a reality that is very different from the one promised in the ‘land of opportunity.’ Yet, though […]
Ellis Island: The Making of a Master Race in America
‘Ellis Island: The Making of a Master Race in America’ documents the influence of eugenics on U.S. immigration policies from the 19th century until now. The film reconstructs the medical and mental examination of “aliens” at Ellis Island, which was designed to exclude “inferior stock” from Southern and Eastern Europe, and describes the social agenda […]
Between Neighborhoods
Seth Fein’s split-screen, trans-historical documentary ‘Between Neighborhoods’ (81 mins) explores the inter-borough and international present and past of imperialism and immigration that orbit the Unisphere in Queens. This edited 11-minute excerpt connects the neoliberal/nationalist age of Donald Trump to the authoritarian liberal legacy of Robert Moses, who constructed the Unisphere as the central theme of […]
Still Living Undocumented: Five Years Later
Still Living Undocumented: Five Years Later is the sequel to the 2012 documentary Living Undocumented: High School, College and Beyond. The first film captured the realities of undocumented youth in New York City. At the same time, the DACA program was announced and drastically changed the lives of some of the people in the film. […]
Fighting For Justice
Anuz Thapa’s “Fighting for Justice” focuses on how the criminal justice system is reluctant to charge people with a ‘hate crime.’ Bangladeshi Imam Maulana Akonjee and his assistant, Thara Uddin were murdered in broad daylight in Queens in 2016. Since losing his father, Saif Akonjee becomes the head of his devastated family, deferring his […]
DACA – Dreams on Hold
Asian American Life’s correspondent Paul Lin reports on DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) and the challenges undocumented students face pursuing a college education. Shirley Leyro
Coming And Living in America
In this short film, women of immigrant and first generation backgrounds came together for an intense one-day video production workshop. The piece details the cultural and emotional challenges they faced in becoming part of contemporary U.S. society. The film is part of The Multiplicity of Us, a workshop presented by New York Women in […]
Rising Up: The Alams
In this documentary, we meet the Alams, a Bangladeshi family living in Coney Island, Brooklyn. Mohammed Alam, the father to two young U.S.-born daughters, is one of 13,000 immigrants facing deportation as a consequence of Special Registration, a post-9/11 policy which targeted nationals of Muslim countries. But the Alams are not just victims. Learn how […]