Independent filmmakers are producing works that go beyond popular narratives of immigration and take risks to tell new ones. The films in this series explore the cultural complexity of leaving one place and arriving in another. What is destroyed in the process? How are networks, politics and identities rebuilt and reformed through migration? Held over two nights, Dream City will include feature-length documentaries and short student works.
Films to be screened include:
A Son’s Sacrifice directed by Yoni Brook. At first glance, Imran Uddin, of mixed Bangladeshi-Puerto Rican heritage and the son of an immigrant, is just another 27-year-old New Yorker struggling to take over his family’s business — what’s unique is that his father’s business is a “pick-your-own” slaughterhouse.
Out of My Hand directed by Takeshi Fukunaga. Filmed in Liberia and New York, Cisco is a Liberian labor leader struggling for better conditions for rubber plantation workers. In this fictional account, he travels to Little Liberia in Staten Island with hopes for a better life. What he finds connects him to home more than ever. Excerpts of the film will be shown.
New York City, NY; NYC