Film Group Feb 23, 2022

Series Fourteen –  Immigration

Zoom discussions of each film will take place on last Wednesdays at 4pm: Jan 26, Feb 23 and Mar 30

Hosted by John LeBlanc

To join the group, please email john.leblanc @ ubc.ca

Series Fourteen: Immigration continues to become a central reality of our time, increasing in scale and complexity and eliciting a wide range of responses from positive promotion (Canada desires and needs more immigrants) to condemnation (strong man countries erecting walls of various sorts).  Feature films have addressed issues of immigration since film began in the late 19th century, but our series will focus on more recent efforts, beginning with El Norte from 40 years ago when the general public was just beginning to gain a more in-depth awareness of such social issues.  Mediterranea provides a more contemporary (and more geographically removed) window into the situation facing immigrants.  Finally, Amreeka sees immigrant experience from a more positive perspective, adding balance to the seemingly insurmountable problems. 

Feb 23 – Mediterranea (2015) – directed by Jonas Carpignano follows two brothers who make the perilous journey from Burkina Faso (Central Africa) through Libya to what they hope will be a promised land in Rosarno (Southern Italy).  The older brother (Ayiva) is played by an actual immigrant who greatly informed the screenplay.  The journey through Africa to the coast is perilous enough, but upon their arrival in Italy they are faced with squalid living conditions, low-paying seasonal work in the citrus groves of the Gioia Tauro plain, and hostility from the locals and the police, with the 2010 anti-immigrant riots in Rosarno as a backdrop.  STREAMING AVAILABLE FROM AMAZON OR YOUTUBE FOR A SMALL FEE.