Film Series

This year the Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE) at Middlebury College centers its signature programming on the intersections of migration(s), race, and ethnicity. During the fall semester, CCSRE will co-host a free, public film series. Three film screenings and discussions will offer rich avenues for examining race, ethnicity, and education across different time periods, geographic locations, languages, and disciplines.

The first screening, on Tuesday, October 2, will be of Kim Snyder’s documentary Welcome to Shelbyville. The film offers a glimpse of America at a crossroads. In one town in the heart of America’s bible belt, a community grapples with rapidly changing demographics. Longtime African-American and White residents are challenged with how to integrate with a growing Latino population and the more recent arrival of hundreds of Somali refugees of Muslim faith. Set on the eve of the 2008 Presidential election, the film captures the interaction between these residents as they navigate new waters against the backdrop of a tumultuous year. The economy is in crisis, factories are closing, and jobs are hard to find. Just as the Latino population grapples with their own immigrant identity, African-America residents look back at their segregated past and balance perceived threats to their livelihood against the values that they learned through their own long struggle for civil rights. While the new-comers attempt to make new lives for themselves and their children, leaders in this deeply religious community attempt to guide their congregations through this period of unprecedented change. Through the vibrant and colorful characters of Shelbyville, the film explores immigrant integration and the interplay between race, religion, and identity. Ultimately, the story is an intimate portrayal of a community’s struggle to understand what it means to be American. The screening will be held in Axinn Center room 232, followed by a dinner-discussion (also in Axinn 232). The event is scheduled from 4:30-7:30pm. The Department of Religion, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, and the Program in American Studies are co-sponsoring this event. Member of the CCSRE and American Studies Program Professor Roberto Lint Sagarena, will facilitate the discussion.

The second film, The Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez  and the Farmworker’s Struggle, follows the first successful organizing drive of farm workers in the United States, while recounting the many failed and dramatic attempts to unionize that led up to this victory. Among the many barriers to organizing was the Bracero Program, which flooded the fields with Mexican contract workers between World War II and the 1960s. The film pays tribute to the tremendous advances made by Chávez and all the men and women of the United Farmworkers Union who fought for a stake in the American dream. Director Rick Tejada-Flores will screen the film and lead a discussion afterwards about the place of migrations, race, and ethnicity in American culture and history. The screening will be on Monday, October 22, from 4:30-6:30pm in Axinn 232. The American Studies Mellon Foundation Liberal Arts Global Action and Program in American studies are co-sponsoring this event.

The final film, documentarian Samir’s Forget Baghdad, will be screened on Monday, November 26. This poignant documentary tells the forgotten story of four Baghdadi-Jews, all former members of the Iraqi communist party who were forced to emigrate at Israel’s founding. The four elderly protagonists (all now successful Israelis) were influenced in their youth by the internationalism of the Iraqi communist party. But in the early 1950s, their Jewish identity put them at odds with the rising Arab nationalism so characteristic of the decade. Fleeing to Israel was hardly a solution, as the men found themselves on the outskirts of a society built and governed by European Jews. Jews in Baghdad and Arabs in Israel, the divided identities and confusion of these four men’s lives tell a much larger tale of global, political and cultural disorder. Professor Ahmad Almallah (Department of Arabic) will facilitate the discussion. This screening and dinner-discussion will held in Axinn Center room 229. The event is scheduled from 4:30-7:30pm. This event is co-sponsored by the Department of Religion, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, International Studies, Middle Eastern Area Studies, Jewish Studies Program, Rohatyn Center for International Affairs, and  the Scott Center.

Please join us for meaningful and critical learning about race, ethnicity, and migration[s].

For more information about any of these films or directions please contact the Center at CCSRE@middlebury.edu