March 4, 2010
The Decorah Newspapers
Luther College will host a film screening and discussion session with documentary filmmaker Luis Argueta on Sunday, March 7, featuring Argueta's new documentary production "abUSed: The Postville Raid."
The program, part of Argueta's national speaking tour, will begin at 4 p.m. in Room 206 of Valders Science Hall on the Luther campus. It is open to the public with no charge for admission. Film producer Argueta will begin the program with a short introductory talk about the May 12, 2008 Postville raid conducted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and about his production of the documentary that chronicles the raid. The screening of "abUSed: The Postville Raid" will be followed by a question-and-answer session.
The award winning director of "The Silence of Neto," Argueta is visiting colleges, churches, synagogues, labor and community centers to present his "abUSed" documentary that tells the story of the small northeast Iowa town decimated by one of largest ICE raids in the history of U.S. immigration law enforcement.
By weaving together the personal stories of the individuals, the families and the town devastated by the raid and its aftermath, the film presents the human face of undocumented immigration and the socioeconomic forces which fuel the worker migration. "abUSed" serves as a cautionary tale against government abuses of constitutional and human rights.
Argueta states the purpose of the tour is to create awareness of the on-going situation in Postville and in the Guatemalan mountain villages from which the workers migrated. He also hopes to contribute to the dialogue on immigration reform in the nation, and raise funds to complete the documentary. Argueta has made eight trips to Postville and eight to Guatemala to compile the information and film the footage for "abUSed." One of the trips to Guatemala was an ICE deportation airplane flight with 120 undocumented workers back to their country of origin. Argueta's tour has included presentations at a variety of venues, including the First Continental Forum on Migration and Peace in Guatemala, the Conference on Irregular Migration for the United Nations permanent delegates in New York City, Yale University, the University of Northern Iowa, the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs in Chicago, CUNY Law School, John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, Cornell University, and the University of Michigan.
About 900 armed ICE agents supported by helicopters, airplanes, state troopers and local police conducted the May 2008 raid in Postville, population 2,320. Agents arrested, handcuffed and chained almost 400 undocumented workers from Guatemala and Mexico at Agriprocessors, Inc., the largest kosher slaughterhouse and meatpacking plant in the country. The arrested workers were transported by bus to the National Cattle Congress in Waterloo, Iowa, which had been outfitted by the government as a detention and processing facility. Using the threat of imprisonment under an aggravated identity theft statute, a felony that carries a two-year jail term, prosecutors "fast-tracked" the undocumented workers into pleading guilty to document fraud and accepting deportation.
After the raids and the whirlwind legal proceedings, 202 of the workers were deported to Guatemala, returning home to poverty and adversity. In Postville, many businesses failed and many families lost their homes. Dozens of workers and family members were denied authorization to leave the state or to work, forcing them to depend on the charity of the church and community for survival.
Sholom Rubashkin, the former plant general manager of Agriprocessors, Inc., was tried and found guilty of bank fraud, but the federal government dismissed all 72 of the immigration and labor law violations filed against him. Because the allegations of labor abuses, wage theft, child labor law violations and other abuses endured by the immigrants will not be heard in court, "abUSed: The Postville Raid" is one of the few public airings of their voices.
http://www.decorahnewspapers.com/main.asp?SectionID=10&SubSectionID=37&ArticleID=21955
Showing posts with label Deportation Movies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Deportation Movies. Show all posts
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Friday, March 13, 2009
Tangled-up tale of immigrants in L.A.; Movie Review of "Crossing Over"
Tangled-up tale of immigrants in L.A.
By Carrie Rickey
The Philadelphia Inquirer Film Critic
Posted on Fri, Mar. 13, 2009
In the aerial shots of Los Angeles that punctuate Wayne Kramer's Crossing Over, the cloverleaf created by intersecting freeways gives the impression of embroidery on fine cloth.
Once the director gets down to ground level, though, the picture looks markedly different. Looking from L.A. south to the Mexican border, Kramer sees immigrants - many of them undocumented and anxious to become legal. And he shows how they try to weave into the social fabric and in the process get all tangled up.
So, too, does Kramer's film, a responsible message movie wrapped in an irresponsible exploitation flick that cries fire in a crowded theater.
A feverish, multistory affair cut from the same bolt as Crash and Traffic, Kramer's Crossing Over presents Southern California as an unraveling crazy quilt of a big tent. For every foreigner desperate to get in, there is a gatekeeper preventing it - or profiting from it.
Similarly, in Kramer's obviously heartfelt movie about the risks many take to be in America, for every gripping plot turn taking you to the edge of your seat, there's one that has you shaking your head in disbelief.
Harrison Ford - in his best role in years - and Cliff Curtis are the main reasons to see the film. They play Max and Hamid, ICE (Immigrant and Customs Enforcement) agents whose job is to pull out illegals like so many stray threads. They raid sweatshops and take into custody undocumented workers such as Mireya (Alice Braga). If she gets deported, who will care for her young son?
Also in Kramer's patchwork are U.S.-raised children of immigrants, like Taslima (Summer Bishil) and Yong Kim (Justin Chon), who try to reconcile divided identities. If they assimilate, they become alienated from their families. If they are proud of their countries of origin, they don't fit in with their native-born peers. Taslima, who gives an impassioned classroom speech interpreted by some as Osama bin Laden propaganda, also arouses the suspicion of federal agents.
And trying to stake a toehold are aspiring actors and singers (and sometimes lovers) Gavin (Jim Sturgess), from Britain, and Claire (Alice Eve), from Australia. In their attempts to score green cards, one games the gatekeepers and the other is gamed by them.
Every drama needs a villain. This overstuffed melodrama has two. One is an Immigration and Naturalization Services adjudicator (Ray Liotta), who trades legal status for sexual favors. The other is . . . well, that would be giving away too much.
Kramer, himself a naturalized American of South African origin, paints a composite portrait in frustration, grief and hopelessness.
Occasionally, his screenplay signals a flash of humor - especially in the Sturgess story line. And happily, Kramer lets the gifted Curtis (the New Zealander of Maori descent who has played just about every ethnicity imaginable) deliver a soliloquy about what U.S. citizenship represents to those who fight so hard to earn what natives take for granted.
Despite some very moving passages, almost all involving the low-key Ford, who has a bleeding heart under his ICE badge, and Curtis, Kramer's film doesn't come together like its obvious antecedents.
To the extent that they succeeded, Babel, Crash and Traffic showed how, though we are all different, our fates are interconnected. Kramer's point seems to be we are all different, all want to be American, and all are just pieces in a quilt waiting to be stitched together.
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/weekend/20090313_Tangled-up_tale_of_immigrants_in_L_A_.html
By Carrie Rickey
The Philadelphia Inquirer Film Critic
Posted on Fri, Mar. 13, 2009
In the aerial shots of Los Angeles that punctuate Wayne Kramer's Crossing Over, the cloverleaf created by intersecting freeways gives the impression of embroidery on fine cloth.
Once the director gets down to ground level, though, the picture looks markedly different. Looking from L.A. south to the Mexican border, Kramer sees immigrants - many of them undocumented and anxious to become legal. And he shows how they try to weave into the social fabric and in the process get all tangled up.
So, too, does Kramer's film, a responsible message movie wrapped in an irresponsible exploitation flick that cries fire in a crowded theater.
A feverish, multistory affair cut from the same bolt as Crash and Traffic, Kramer's Crossing Over presents Southern California as an unraveling crazy quilt of a big tent. For every foreigner desperate to get in, there is a gatekeeper preventing it - or profiting from it.
Similarly, in Kramer's obviously heartfelt movie about the risks many take to be in America, for every gripping plot turn taking you to the edge of your seat, there's one that has you shaking your head in disbelief.
Harrison Ford - in his best role in years - and Cliff Curtis are the main reasons to see the film. They play Max and Hamid, ICE (Immigrant and Customs Enforcement) agents whose job is to pull out illegals like so many stray threads. They raid sweatshops and take into custody undocumented workers such as Mireya (Alice Braga). If she gets deported, who will care for her young son?
Also in Kramer's patchwork are U.S.-raised children of immigrants, like Taslima (Summer Bishil) and Yong Kim (Justin Chon), who try to reconcile divided identities. If they assimilate, they become alienated from their families. If they are proud of their countries of origin, they don't fit in with their native-born peers. Taslima, who gives an impassioned classroom speech interpreted by some as Osama bin Laden propaganda, also arouses the suspicion of federal agents.
And trying to stake a toehold are aspiring actors and singers (and sometimes lovers) Gavin (Jim Sturgess), from Britain, and Claire (Alice Eve), from Australia. In their attempts to score green cards, one games the gatekeepers and the other is gamed by them.
Every drama needs a villain. This overstuffed melodrama has two. One is an Immigration and Naturalization Services adjudicator (Ray Liotta), who trades legal status for sexual favors. The other is . . . well, that would be giving away too much.
Kramer, himself a naturalized American of South African origin, paints a composite portrait in frustration, grief and hopelessness.
Occasionally, his screenplay signals a flash of humor - especially in the Sturgess story line. And happily, Kramer lets the gifted Curtis (the New Zealander of Maori descent who has played just about every ethnicity imaginable) deliver a soliloquy about what U.S. citizenship represents to those who fight so hard to earn what natives take for granted.
Despite some very moving passages, almost all involving the low-key Ford, who has a bleeding heart under his ICE badge, and Curtis, Kramer's film doesn't come together like its obvious antecedents.
To the extent that they succeeded, Babel, Crash and Traffic showed how, though we are all different, our fates are interconnected. Kramer's point seems to be we are all different, all want to be American, and all are just pieces in a quilt waiting to be stitched together.
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/weekend/20090313_Tangled-up_tale_of_immigrants_in_L_A_.html
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