A moving portrait of traditional Finnish American culture in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, highlighting that fragile community of memory connecting ourselves with parents and grandparents. It uses the “biographical model” of folklore filmmaking to tell the story of Erikki Vourenmaa, a 92-year-old Finnish immigrant, and his family living near Ironwood, Michigan. This three-generation farm family works, celebrates, reflects, and grieves together. The film explores the meaning of family, ethnic history, aging and intergenerational bonds. It contrasts between the immigrant elder, his American-born son and the partially assimilated grandchildren to illustrate change and continuity in the "sauna belt" of the Lake Superior Region. As Dr. Sharon Sherman concluded, “Loukinen’s focus on the bonds between generations will strike emotional chords about family relationships and ethnic identity for numerous cultural groups.”
In this sports documentary, Connor Stalions addresses the allegations surrounding the Michigan football sign-stealing scandal for the first time.
Pikilina is a Dominican-born woman of Haitian descent. Racial and political violence erupts when the country of her birth, the Dominican Republic, reverses birthright citizenship and she and 200,000 others are left stateless.
Documentary that shows the changing attitude towards immigrant labor in The Netherlands. The documentary follows three immigrants that arrived in Holland 30 years ago to work in a bakery.
The San Francisco Foundation presents 2013 Community Leadership Awardee, Educators for Fair Consideration (E4FC), with The San Francisco Foundation Award, made to an organization demonstrating exemplary commitment to improving human relations in the Bay Area. E4FC provides direct support to and advocacy for highly motivated, college-bound undocumented students who had come to the United States as children and wished to remain. They are a leader in the field of immigrant work, providing youth tangible support and the space for them to tell their own story. As a result, E4FC's work is an essential part of the DREAMers movement catapulting the organizations role as a leader in both the Bay Area and as a national model in supporting and empowering immigrant youth. www.sff.org/cla
Chinese for Affirmative Action is a recipient of the San Francisco Community Leadership Award for being "a champion against discrimination and for advancing systemic change for a racially just society. With its foundation firmly in the Asian and Pacific American community, its grassroots and policy efforts cross cultures to ensure equal opportunities for communities of color, reduce language barriers, and promote immigrant rights across the Bay Area." - San Francisco Foundation
Greek Sarakatsani community members, a former group of nomadic animal breeders, share personal experiences and discuss the concept of identity today. A tribute to collective memory through an experiential journey that sets out from the past, progresses into the present, and contemplates the future.
Klaira presents a surprising vision of assimilation and a loving depiction of San Francisco. She and her grandparents explore how the experience of immigration changed their sense of self and altered the fabric of their relationship.
Klaira presents a surprising vision of assimilation and a loving depiction of San Francisco. She and her grandparents explore how the experience of immigration changed their sense of self and altered the fabric of their relationship.
Klaira presents a surprising vision of assimilation and a loving depiction of San Francisco. She and her grandparents explore how the experience of immigration changed their sense of self and altered the fabric of their relationship.
This Ukrainian-Jewish teenager immigrated to San Francisco as a young child. Now on the brink of adulthood, she interviews her grandparents about their new lives yearning to see her American world through their eyes. Yelena understands that life in the US has changed her profoundly.
This Ukrainian-Jewish teenager immigrated to San Francisco as a young child. Now on the brink of adulthood, she interviews her grandparents about their new lives yearning to see her American world through their eyes. Yelena understands that life in the US has changed her profoundly.
This Ukrainian-Jewish teenager immigrated to San Francisco as a young child. Now on the brink of adulthood, she interviews her grandparents about their new lives yearning to see her American world through their eyes. Yelena understands that life in the US has changed her profoundly.
This Ukrainian-Jewish teenager immigrated to San Francisco as a young child. Now on the brink of adulthood, she interviews her grandparents about their new lives yearning to see her American world through their eyes. Yelena understands that life in the US has changed her profoundly.
This documentary follows 8 teens and pre-teens as they work their way toward the finals of the Scripps Howard national spelling bee championship in Washington D.C.
The first of two coproductions by the British Broadcasting Corporation and the National Film Board of Canada, People of the Seal, Part 1: Eskimo Summer is compiled from some of the most vivid footage ever filmed of the life of the Netsilik Inuit in the Kugaaruk region (formerly Pelly Bay) of the Canadian Arctic. The original films of the Netsilik series attempted to recreate the traditional lifestyle of Netsilingmiut living there. They show the incredible resourcefulness of the Netsilik (People of the Seal) who have adapted to one of the world's harshest environments. Part 1: Eskimo Summer shows how Inuit families prepare for winter by hunting seal, birds and caribou and by fishing for Arctic Char during the extended hours of daylight.
This feature documentary takes us to the heart of the Jane-Finch "Corridor" in the early 1980s. Covering six square blocks in Toronto's North York, the area readily evokes images of vandalism, high-density subsidized housing, racial tension, despair and crime. By focusing on the lives of several of the residents, many of them black or members of other visible minorities, the film provides a powerful view of a community that, contrary to its popular image, is working towards a more positive future.
Filmmaker Christopher Quinn observes the ordeal of three Sudanese refugees -- Jon Bul Dau, Daniel Abul Pach and Panther Bior -- as they try to come to terms with the horrors they experienced in their homeland, while adjusting to their new lives in the United States.
The encounter with a growing, and mostly undocumented, brazilian community allows us to bear witness to its energy, its vivacity, and its diversity. This film attempts to work for a larger acceptance of foreigners in their land of exile.
Born to Korean immigrant parents freed from indentured servitude in early twentieth century Mexico, Jerónimo Lim Kim joins the Cuban Revolution with his law school classmate Fidel Castro and becomes an accomplished government official in the Castro regime, until he rediscovers his ethnic roots and dedicates his later life to reconstructing his Korean Cuban identity. After Jerónimo's death, younger Korean Cubans recognize his legacy, but it is not until they are presented with the opportunity to visit South Korea that questions about their mixed identity resurface.
Since Little League Baseball was founded in 1939, about 40 million kids have played the sport. The list includes future Hall of Famers like Carl Yastrzemski, Tom Seaver and Nolan Ryan, and hundreds of other future Major Leaguers. But of all the kids who ever played Little League, the best of the best was a boy you’ve probably never heard of: Art “Pinky” Deras. In the summer of 1959, he led the team from Hamtramck, Mich., to the Little League World Series title, and in the process, he put together a Little League season the likes of which we might never see again. His amazing story comes to life in “The Legend of Pinky Deras: The Greatest Little-Leaguer There Ever Was,” a new film from Blue Hammer Films. Pinky received a ton of national publicity back in 1959, but then he fell off the map. In the half-century since he lit the Little League world on fire, there have been no films about him, no magazine stories, not even a single newspaper article.