Thursday, October 26, 2017 • 314 Royce Hall • 4 PM
Film Screening: “We Are In It”
By Yehuda Sharim (Rice University)
“We Are In It” chronicles the stories and journeys of five Houston residents and their attempt to find refuge in the American metropolis. By combining tales of deportation with everyday defeats and resilience, the film identifies what lies beneath the surface of migrant and refugee realities and the unsettling need to move towards political and economic security. The film documents their personal archives—poetry and paintings of Baghdad, film clips of the Burmese diaspora, songs in Swahili—and their efforts to re-envisage a home amidst experiences of warfare, hardship, and alienation. Filmed over a period of two years, the film not only sheds new light on the political climate of global migration but also speaks to universal human values of compassion and belonging.
Moderator: Todd S. Presner (UCLA)
Respondent: Ananya Roy (UCLA)
Sponsored by the
UCLA Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies
Cosponsored by the
Institute on Inequality and Democracy at UCLA Luskin
UCLA Center for the Study of International Migration
UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television
UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance
About the Director:
Yehuda Sharim is a scholar, filmmaker, and creative director of Houston in Motion: Empowering Houston Migrant and Refugee Communities, a multi-media project that provides a window into the lives and experiences of refugee communities in Houston. “We are in it” is his directorial debut.
Dr. Sharim is currently teaching at Rice University, serving as a Kinder Fellow in the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University. His other artistic and scholarly work explores connections between art, poetry, comparative migration studies, cultural studies, and race and ethnic studies.
In the Press:
“A Voice for Refugees” – Rice at Large Magazine
“In Houston, a filmmaker tries to understand the city’s mélange of refugees” – The Urban Edge
“A Voice for Houston’s Refugees” – Rice Magazine
“Migrant Ironies: Migrants Hope for Life Without Limitations in Houston” – The Feminist Wire
