In this session of BK@24FPS we will explore the DREAM Act, its failure to pass in Congress, and how a group of young immigration activists forced a national conversation on policy reform resulting in Obama’s Executive Order known as DACA. Within his first month in office, Trump moved forward on building a wall and executing a travel ban. With ICE raids being widely reported, the threat to immigrants on and off US soil has reached a critical point. We will watch segments of the powerful documentary ‘Immigration Battle’ and the poetic short film ‘Dreams Awake’ plus a stop-motion animated short from the ‘Dreamer Generation’ series to dig into the state of immigration in the US and draw lessons from those who’ve been fighting for immigration reform for decades.

A meditation on immigration and expression through the experience of one immigrant worker who discovered his political and artistic voice in the US.

Goes behind closed doors in Washington’s corridors of power to explore the political realities surrounding one of the country’s most pressing and divisive issues.

Shari Robertson and Michael Camerini have been making documentary films together for 20 years. Their New York City production company is the Epidavros Project/Epidoko Pictures. Before joining forces, both made movies about cultures and political situations outside the U.S. They filmed matriarchs of extended families in Haryana State, India, and young Khmer Rouge guerrilla fighters in Western Cambodia, coca growers in Peru’s Upper Huallaga Valley and tribal elders in Kankan, Northeast Guinea. Their first feature documentary collaboration was a deep look at the barriers to girls’ education in Africa, These Girls are Missing. The first U.S. film came next—an inside look at the American political asylum system, the groundbreaking Well-Founded Fear. Then in the summer of 2001, still in the United States, they entered into the mysteries of Capitol Hill, by far the most complex culture and political situation either of them had encountered … anywhere. Twelve years later, the New York Film Festival premiered all 10 feature documentaries in the resulting series How Democracy Works Now. Fall 2015 brought a return to Lincoln Center and the New York Film Festival to premiere the series’ capstone, Immigration Battle/Reasons to Believe. The national U.S. broadcast on PBS Frontline followed in late October. After Capitol Hill, Camerini and Robertson are once again on the loose, in the world. Their latest stop took them to Africa’s Sahel region for an up-close look at ordinary people working to counter violent extremism in, NIGER:Tales of Resilience.

Our monthly Brooklyn-based screening series  – BK@24fps