Urban Flourishing and Migrant Lives
- 120 mins
The story of the immigration crisis is prominent in the news. Without diminishing the very real chaos and human toll of America’s broken immigration system, we should not forget the lives behind the news. Those stories call for our moral attention and serious answers rather than petty slogans. This program highlights the stories of people, such as Matar, an asylum seeker in England who gets by on bicycle delivery gigs, and the folks in Undocujoy and Between Us Women, who strive and struggle to find peace, opportunity, and safety in new lands and communities. People like those depicted in the films we present in this program are our neighbors and contribute to the life of our cities. Their stories reveal their hopes and travails, which brings life to their part in the shared narrative of our urban lives. We should be attentive to their stories, because stories like theirs make us who we are and will form what we will, as a city and a region, will become. San Francisco is a sanctuary city and is a place enlivened by its long history of migrants settling here and throughout the Bay Area and Northern California to make a life, raise families, start enterprises of all sorts, and link us in the common goal and act of flourishing.
Nadia Tavera, Coordinator with the Nueva Esperanza Accompaniment Teams (NEAT) at the Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity, will be interpreting for this program.
Doors open 5:00; Program 5:30 – 7:30 pm.
Curator: Ron Sundstrom
Panelists:
Ron Sundstrom (moderator), SFUFF Humanities Advisor, Professor of Philosophy, University of San Francisco
Reverend Deborah Lee, Executive Director, Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity
Lariza Dugan Cuadra, Executive Director, Central American Resource Center of Northern California (Carecen SF)
Shauna Siggelkow, Director of Digital Storytelling, Define American
Bryan Martinez, Community Member
In this program
UndocuJoy
Directed by Monica Medellin
#UndocuJoy combats victimizing representations of people who are undocumented by flooding the media with authentic images of happiness.
Matar
Directed by Hassan Akkad
An asylum seeker in England is forced to live on the fringes of society and rely on his bike to survive.
The Golden Cage: Life in the Border Colonias
Directed by Shauna Siggelkow
A rare glimpse into life in the Southern US border communities called colonias.
Between Us Women: Undocumented and Trans
Directed by Shauna Siggelkow
In 2017 under the threat of a Trump presidency and restrictive anti-LGBTQ laws, the trans, undocumented Latina community of North Carolina find strength in each other, but their community is disappearing.