Beginning with Charlie Chaplin's 1917 short The Immigrant, there's an entire genre of immigrant movies. Eat a Bowl of Tea, Avalon, Vente a Alemania, Pepe, My Beautiful Laundrette, From the Snow, Double Happiness, Moscow on the Hudson, Stranger Than Paradise, The Heart of the World are all about nationless drifters - people transplanted into strange cultures, seekers, dreamers, and refugees. Immigrant movies are fascinating because they show people without the protection of a government most of us take for granted. British films have dwelled on South Asian immigrants, French films focused on the large North African immigrant population, German films on Turkish immigrants and American films focused on Hispanic and Asian immigrants. Our aim is to analyze films and videos made by filmmakers around the world in order to understand how they articulate the issues surrounding immigrant identity in their adopted 'homelands', and how they portray the reactions of the host society to the question of immigrants. We will examine the cross-cultural fertilisation that is taking place between the immigrant culture and the popular culture in their homeland. God Grew Tired of Us 2006 The film is a chronicle of three Sudanese refugees emigrating to America. Quinceanera 2006 The film looks at Hispanic family culture through the eyes of teenagers living in Los Angeles. Spanglish 2004 A woman and her daughter emigrate from Mexico for a better life in America. The woman starts working for a family where the patriarch is a newly celebrated chef with an insecure wife. The Terminal 2004 An Eastern European immigrant in the United States (Tom Hanks) is forced to live permanently at an airport when his war-torn former country's borders are erased — voiding his passport and leaving him with no political home. The refugee meets and falls in love with a flight attendant (Catherine Zeta-Jones), which prompts a bold escape plan. Head-On 2002 The film tells a stormy love story set among Turkish immigrants in Germany. In This World 2002 The film tracks two young Afghans trying to reach Britain. Dirty Pretty Things 2002 The film is set among exploited illegal immigrants in London. Lilya 4-Ever 2002 The film tells the harrowing, if familiar, story of Eastern European girls who end up as prostitutes in the West. Bend It Like Beckham 2002 The film is a feel-good story about a girls' soccer team. Chaos 2001 Malika flees an arranged marriage but is then kidnapped and forced into prostitution. East is East 1999 An immigrant family from Pakistan tries to raise their children in London. Salut Cousin! 1996 The film is about two Algerian boys chasing their dreams. Bye-Bye 1995 Karim Dridi follows two French-Arab boys through Marseille's underworld. Performing the Border 1999 Video, 42min. A video essay set in the Mexican-U.S. border town of Ciudad Juarez, where U.S. multinational corporations assemble electronic and digital equipment just across from El Paso, Texas. This imaginative, experimental work investigates the growing feminization of the global economy and its impact on Mexican women living and working in the area. The #7 Train 1999 Video, 29min. The #7 Train follows the lives of four immigrant passengers in New York and their conflicted relationships with the city: a Korean who works in a Harlem fish store, two Otavalen street vendors from Ecuador who work near Chinatown and a Pakistani salesman on Fifth Avenue. Beautiful People 1999 Jasmin Dizdar views the Bosnian war through the eyes of both refugees and Britons. Taxi-vala/Auto-biography 1994 Video, 49 min. Taxi-vala explores the immigration experiences of Indian and Pakistani taxi drivers in New York City. Issues of limited professional opportunities, educational background, family and class are addressed. The Great Pinoy Boxing Era 1994 Video, 30 min. This documentary reveals contributions made by Filipino men who came to the United States during 1930's not only as farm laborers but aide boxing techniques and explores how the heroic efforts of these athletes united the Filipino-American community. Bhaji on the Beach 1993 The film portrays the lives of Indian women in Britain Night songs 1984 16mm. 116 min. Night songs is the story of a Chinese immigrant family as seen through the eyes of their Chinese-Vietnamese cousin during her stay with them in New York City's Chinatown. An outsider among outsiders, the cousin finds work in a garment industry sweatshop. After work, she writes longingly and poetically in her journal of the husband and sons she had to leave behind in a Southeast Asian refugee camp. Reminiscences of a Trip to Lithuania 1972 16mm, 90min. In this very personal film diary Jonas Mekas, avant-garde filmmaker and founder of Anthology Film Archives, journeys home to the Lithuanian village of his youth after a 25 year absence. Mekas speaks not only of the joy he feels in reconnecting to his family and friends, but of the pain of feeling eternally "displaced" both in Lithuania and in his adopted home, New York.

 

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