From Here: A Documentary by Christina Antonakos-Wallace
Christina Antonakos-Wallace is an American documentary filmmaker whose acclaimed film, From Here (2020), explores what it means to be considered a racial, ethnic, or religious outsider in mainstream society. Moving back and forth between New York and Berlin, the film follows four people who are first or second generation immigrants as they face challenges and disappointments, find their voice in art or activism, and reflect on the nature of home and belonging.
Born and raised in Seattle in the Greek-American community, Christina learned early that diasporas seek to preserve their identities in ways that can be exclusionary. She became a youth organizer and took up projects of social justice. She came to New York to get her undergraduate degree at the New School, studied abroad in Greece, and also did an internship in 2006 at the UN Commission for Refugees. Here she became aware of new European immigration and asylum policies that led to her desire to document their effects on actual lives. What is a departure in Christina’s approach from more familiar narratives of immigrant trajectories is the granular nature of her observations, an effect she was able to bring to her film through long years of working with her subjects. Her own film can thus be seen as a journey of empathic connection and unfolding self-discovery.
The project’s website, With Wings and Roots, is a vibrant space for immigrant conversations and collaborations. Among her long-term goals is a shift in the cultural conversation around migration and belonging, a shift that can only come about through delving into historical contexts and through the tracing of intersectional timelines.
Interview by Guillermina Zabala (GZ) and Sumita Chakravarty (SC)
In the interview with Christina (CA) that follows, we were fascinated by the detailed and thoughtful nature of her responses. While some of her musings have had to be edited for the purposes of this newsletter, we are deeply grateful for the insights that she has provided.
SC: Can you tell us a little about the genesis of this project?
CA: Many tributaries came together to take form as this film. Although my own family immigrated from Greece in the early 20 century, we maintained a strong relationship to the diaspora. I grew up going to Greek school and folk dancing and attending community events multiple times a week. And there was a lot of beauty there, but there was also a pretty narrow way of thinking about identity and that I would call a “purity approach” to culture and belonging.
As a teenager I became an activist. In the racial justice spaces I was becoming a part of, the concept of assimilation was presented as complicity with white supremacy, both for white and BIPOC individuals. There was no subtlety to discuss how identity and culture shift and change. White people were being encouraged to re-engage with their roots as part of our anti-racist work of unlearning white-supremacy. But this approach was confusing for me because I grew up with my “roots,” and I intuitively knew that traditions could be used both to empower and to oppress. The space for my own identity to be multiple and layered and complex didn’t exist anywhere. So many of my friends were struggling with some version of this story.
So, it was these personal questions from my youth about wanting to advance racial justice, but really being confused about how to do so in relation to my identity: I was a white person but also a white ethnic person and our experiences were pretty different. The confusion I had about my own identity in relationship to challenging white supremacy took me this quest to understand my own experience, it took me into activist work for immigrant justice, academic research and also creative work.
And it also took me to living in Greece for a while; which is where I became interested in global migration. I studied abroad in Greece when I was a college student. I had been there before but that was the most extended period of time. It was 2004 during a wave of not just anti-immigrant sentiment (because that’s still very prevalent in Greece), but xenophobia targeted at Albanians and people who had fled to Greece after the civil war in the Balkans. It was interesting because I was being perceived by some people as an Albanian immigrant. I spoke Greek, but I was making grammatical mistakes and didn’t appear to be American. The way that manifested was several people asking me to leave their businesses or leave their building. These people were afraid of me. It really was a deeply transformative experience because it unsettled any ideas I had about national identity. It ended any kind of romantic notions I had about connecting to my Greek heritage being the solution to racism and white supremacy. There I was, in Greece, and people were directing their racism against me. Sadly, I was going to my Greek friends and family and sharing the experience and some of them were defending that position.
This experience got me thinking about identity and belonging in the U.S. context in completely new ways. For example, the nationalities that we take for granted in Europe as “real” are only a couple centuries old–there have always been multiple language groups, religious groups within those bordered areas. At that point I started thinking about what form a film could take that would draw out some of these tensions through storytelling. When I got to Germany in 2006, a new policy — the 2006 National Integration plan—had just been developed with the purpose of promoting integration of Germany’s many immigrants in contrast the explicit policies of segregation of Germany’s large scale “Guest Worker” program. In Berlin, 44% of young people come from immigrant families. There was a major public debate happening, and there was a constant story in the media that immigrants weren’t trying hard enough, and that young people were especially unintegrated. There was no mention of how the system had segregated people residentially, educationally, etc. What I saw in Germany was something else — that German culture had actually moved through decades of migration, and that German government, politics and dominant thinking hasn’t caught up the reality.
I started talking to people, especially young people from immigrant families, about what was going on in Germany and whether they agreed that young people’s voices could be important to interject in these debates through a film. I got such a strong response from people saying: “Yes! Please do your project here, please do it here right now!” I felt like Germany chose me, in a way.
GZ: Can you be a bit more specific about the research process and how you decided to follow the four individuals in your film?
CA: I interviewed about fifty people to find the protagonists. I was interested in people who were questioning and pushing the categories of identity and belonging that have been forced upon them due to migration. The identities that get called into question because of migration – citizenship, national identity, ethnic identity. When you cross these literal borders, you also end up crossing many other borders at the same time. I was looking for people whose daily lives embody not just those questions but intelligent ways of dealing with those tensions between wings and roots; traditions and freedoms.
I chose those four individuals from the research process which was a bit more systematic in Berlin. In Berlin I had such a good sense of the landscape in terms of what communities were present. I found people who wanted to work with me on the film and reached out to tons of community organizations. They referred people, we interviewed those people, and I started following the individuals who I thought had powerful insight from their insider/outsider position and also had things unfolding in their life that we could follow over time.
I was interested in people who were finding their own ways to grapple with belonging. Ultimately I found those people to all be artists and activists, even though that hadn’t been my initial constraint. It was really important to me that they were different from each other and had offered different stories of how people grapple with the same questions but find their own path. In a city like New York over half of the people have immigrant parents. The question, “Where do I belong?” is an everyday question for a huge percentage of the population, also inside of their own families. For example, not necessarily to be able to communicate with grandparents or even parents due to language barriers, in some cases. Not having the same citizenship rights as their best friends because they came to the U.S. when they were 2 years old. When dominant society constantly reinforces that being American is one thing, and that is being white.
With the film I am trying to invite us to ask the question, what if we all belong? What if migration is part of reality? What if it’s not an anomaly but an inevitable part of our human condition moving forward? How would that free us to think of how to relate to each other and our political systems differently? I was interested in both questions of legal status and “softer” questions of identity that are harder to measure than tracking somebody’s process through the legal system. And I looked for people who could illuminate some of the political moments that we’re living in–such as post-9/11 islamophobia. In addition, I was interested in telling stories that are rarely told. I was hoping to add something to the conversation that was in short supply.
SC: Your film covers a span from 2007 to 2019… what were some of the challenges in following people over such a long period?
CA: It’s tremendously challenging to maintain stamina for that many years. There wasn’t a lot of funding for the work. So part of the challenge was to figure out how to afford to do the work. Certainly, I didn’t think I was going to follow the protagonists for such a long period of time, either. As the process unfolded I realized that actually… not just their individual stories but the way their stories illuminated these questions only got richer as we spent time with them. Time to see how they grew and changed, how their thinking grew and changed, to see the relationship between the individual and the structures that they’re operating within. Our relationships deepened along the way. They reached out to me when important things were happening in their lives. It is really a gift to any film to take time, and certainly that is true with my film. I was able to continue to follow them on their journeys so that the complexities of their lives could be captured on camera.
GZ: Did you have a plan on how to capture their lives? What was your filming style?
CA: I started working on this when I was pretty young–so in many ways I jumped in headfirst. I began filming in 2007 when I was 25 years old. and I went into it thinking I was going to make a character-driven vérité documentary influenced by traditions like direct cinema. But it really evolved to be, in some ways, more like a social practice art project where the community became part of the making of the project.The work manifested itself in all of these different shapes including short films, an interactive website, workshops, and live events.It all came from this little concept of a film and grew into this other animal.
GZ: I noticed that you don’t have the typical sit-down interviews, instead use their audio and show them moving along their lives doing stuff, interacting with other people.
CA: Yes, that was a stylistic choice. I decided to use the audio of the interviews primarily to add a certain reflectiveness that is not so easy to capture in daily life. Everything else in the film comes through life as it was unfolding on camera. It would have been much easier to use their interviews, cut them up and illustrate it with b-roll. But there was almost none of that approach. I like films that give me the feeling that I am discovering something together with a filmmaker and the protagonists in real time.
My intention was never to be neutral, because I have strong political views about these issues, but really to let their stories unfold on their own and to not overshadow their voices with my process, and my reflection on them. I aspired to let the film amplify the things that were closest to their truths. And it took a long time for me to feel confident that I could create their narration. I tried not to sensationalize pain or success. I accompanied them through their daily lives, they don’t have to be the most dramatic stories, they’re ordinary people, showing rather extraordinary resilience and creativity in their daily choices. I guess that’s what interests me: how ordinary people, especially people who experience oppression, work magic in their own lives. To visualize that required being very quiet and getting to know them, listening, and trying to create the space for them to be themselves with me and not feel like they were constantly performing to meet my expectations or to counter the stereotypes that people project on them. To really feel empowered to be there full selves.
SC: Seems like the best way…
CA: It is gratifying. But it’s a hard way both in terms of the creative process and also in terms of getting funding. We live in a time where suffering is commodified and celebrity is everything, so doing something else requires a lot of perseverance against commercial norms. You can’t guarantee that x, y, and z is going to happen. You’re not just going for the most sensational story. But I hope that also makes the film relatable for so many people. There could be so many people walking down the street in New York City or Berlin right now…which doesn’t mean I don’t find my protagonists incredible people. I do! I couldn’t have spent years on their stories without being so inspired by each of them.
SC: Was there any particular theme that either you wanted to highlight or that your character’s thought of highlighting?
CA: The film is essentially an offering to recognize the fluidity of identity, the structural racism in our immigration systems and dominant culture, and the global dimension of these issues. Underneath the political fights over immigration is the cultural fight over who is allowed to belong. This is where the battle for immigrant rights will be won. If we long for and recognize our need for each other. We have to claim that belonging and fight for new systems that protect all of us.
Emotionally I was hoping to capture the whole range, the humor as well as the heartbreak, the injustice as well as the resilience; without trying to make the story that implies that everything is going to be alright. There is so much injustice and violence against immigrants and refugees right now and it’s not guaranteed that it is all going to be alright. Even with a new political administration.
In terms of the growing human rights abuses facing immigrants and refugees worldwide–we need all kinds of stories, the stories that focus on the humanitarian crisis at the borders, and also the stories of the children of those people who think: “Okay, my parents couldn’t vote. My parents couldn’t participate. My parents have been struggling, working 80 hours a week to keep food on the table. But I have the chance to change things. What am I going to do with it even when I am also treated like an outsider? But I have more education, language skills, sense of agency, and powerful insight to be able to build a different world.
I was hoping that FROM HERE would tell that story without minimizing the humanitarian crises we have on our hands right now. Anti-immigrant politics have been the most consistent organizing tool of the far-right in both Europe and the U.S. It is urgent to address these issues from many angles. I do see a lot of hope. I see tremendous power in the huge numbers of people who cannot relate to these fixed national identity categories which I believe are legacies from a previous era. We are not going to be able to survive as a human species if we keep clinging to this idea of national borders, national belonging, and national citizenship. We actually can’t solve the problems that we have upon us, which are global problems, if we’re only thinking about our own borders. I think it’s a great advantage to the world that there are so many young people who actually have an organic connection to places and languages beyond the place that they were born–bridging geographies p and also thinking globally about the conditions that we’re living in.
GZ: Can you talk about the first audience response and in what way you see that this film can create some sort of social impact?
CA: It has been really positive, but it’s more challenging to talk about audience response in 2020 than it would be in any other year. Unfortunately almost all of the film festivals we’ve been in have had to be virtual. We get a few people reaching out to us, which is amazing, but a lot of it feels like presenting the work in the dark. But I can say that what has been extremely gratifying is that the film seems to be resonating with a wide range of people over the years. We did many work-in-progress screenings to get feedback during the editing process. The very last one I did was in October 2018 and there were young people in the audience who were DACA recipients themselves as well as middle-age white Americans. So there was a pretty wide range of people. What was most important to me, honestly, was that the young people in the room whose stories were closely reflected felt that the film spoke to them.It was at an academic conference (the Imagining America Convening) so they were all undergraduate students who were part of a fellowship and they came up to me afterwards and asked me if I can mentor their program. I was so gratified. And at the same screening we had people who had no direct relationship to immigration approaching me to share that they were deeply moved.
I’ve been very encouraged by the reactions to the film of the protagonists themselves. Not only do they feel good about the film but they love each other’s stories… Whenever I talk to one of them about the film they’re kind of glowing about the others. It’s a really sweet thing to have them feel so much respect and admiration for each other, and feel their own story becomes more powerful by being together.
In terms of the impact, cultivating solidarity is one of the biggest goals for this project. I think that includes cultivating solidarity in people who are not part of immigrant communities and citizens. So, to actually see the impact that these policies have on people’s lives in the film and encourage citizens and non-immigrants to get off of the sidelines is a goal. Also, hopefully building solidarity between different communities that aren’t often seen as connected. How often do we see the South Asian community and the Latinx community, the Vietnamese community and the Romani people in one film? These are stories that often don’t get woven together. To see the relationship and the shared struggle and the power of working together, across communities, I hope that’s one of the contributions that this film makes.
GZ: Can you tell us about the mission and vision of With Wings and Roots?
CA: With Wings and Roots was the initial name of the film, but at some point the project grew so much that the film needed its own name. With Wings and Roots became the name of the initiative, which is basically a collaboration of people interested in reframing immigration narratives and fostering greater justice and belonging using creative means. We have a web platform withwingsandroots.org that has interactive timelines of migration, citizenship, and belonging for Germany and the U.S., as well as a living archive of over 100 excerpts from over fifty interviews with young people who grew up in immigrant families reflecting on their experiences.
On top of the web platform, we have offered many varieties of workshops over the years–training teachers in immigration history, facilitating young people through media making. With the timeline, we started the research in 2012. It was very important that Black American history and Native American history were part of the timelines and not as an afterthought. So, there is the timeline itself and we also created a curriculum around it with teachers. These resources can be found on our website.
We’ve also hosted public events and created installations. It’s been an organically growing project and the main thing is that it is driven by how limited and often racist the dominant narratives about immigration are, and the desire to offer visions of different ways of approaching nationality and identity… I continue to do this work even as I’m taking on new projects. Of course I am also interested in other topics, but I am deeply passionate about working for immigrant and racial justice. I believe migration offers a lens to look into one of our deepest human questions of how we belong. This has political and spiritual dimensions. I believe that the work is to cultivate an “us without a them,” as john a. powell so beautifully frames.
On Cinema and Politics: Borat Subsequent Moviefilm
By Corine E.R.
Corine E.R. is a current International student in the MA Media Studies Program at The New School with 11 years of professional multinational experience in brand building/advertising and an avid passion for storytelling in both fiction and documentary forms.
Fourteen years after the release of Borat created and played by Sacha Baron Cohen (SBC), news broke in September 2020 confirming the finalization of Borat Subsequent Film. Speculations had surfaced on a potential production in works weeks before the announcement as Cohen was spotted in character in Los Angeles. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan was released on October 23rd on Amazon prime video.
Despite its controversial release and reception in 2006 (banned by some countries for what was labeled as “grotesque” content and censored/altered in others for ethnic misrepresentations), Borat was judged at the time to be a commercial success ($262M revenue worldwide for a $18M budget) triggering conversation about satire and ‘mockumentary’ as a film genre (also referred to as shockumentary), US social values system, and foreign countries/immigrants representation/misrepresentation in Hollywood.
The news of a sequel came with excitement from the initial film’s fan base and surprise especially within the industry as SBC had announced in 2007 none will be made. What has initiated it at this time? Are the same themes resurfacing? The answer is in the film as a product with a full marketing plan.
The plotline is as follows: Fourteen years after being sentenced to a life sentence post embarrassing Kazakhstan in the US and damaging diplomatic relationships between the two countries, Borat is released from prison and sent to the US on a mission to redeem Kazakhstan (and himself) by gifting the minister of Culture (and reputed porn star) Johnny the Monkey to Mike Pence – deeming it improbable to be able to reach Trump. The journey gets complicated after Borat’s 15 year old daughter Tutar (played by Maria Bakalova) whom he only learned of upon his release, hijacks a seat in Johnny’s box and eats him while on the trip. Borat is left with no option but gifting Tutar instead, who welcomes the idea having been always fascinated by Melania Trump, the Slovenian beauty who married her older American prince. Going around the country, Borat sets Tutar to succeed in her upcoming ‘role’ initiating a makeover, meeting with a female influencer, attending a debutante ball all the way to scheduling a plastic surgery. On their adventure during which Covid-19 pandemic hits, they are introduced to the current US through multiple encounters (anti-abortion priest, Mike Pence at the Republican Convention event, Rudy Giuliani for an interview, Q-anon hosts, Pro-trump rally event, woman empowering babysitter) and to each other. After a heated clash and separation, a liberated “liberalized” Tutar reconnects with Borat and through an evolved relationship, they manage an alternative plan that saves them and Kazakhstan. In the euphoria of the aftermath, the film closes with an invitation to Americans to “Go Vote.”
In several of his interviews related to the film launch, SBC reiterates that his intent from the movie was political in terms of covered themes which was not the case in the first volume. Below are excerpts from his interview with Maureen Dowd for the New York Times on Oct 17, 2020):
On the target audience (or part of it),
“We wanted it to be a reminder to women of who they’re voting for – or who they’re not voting for.”
“If you’re a woman and you don’t vote against this guy, then know what you’re doing for your gender.”
On the sequel,
“My aim here was not to expose racism and anti-Semitism,” […] “The aim is to make people laugh, but we reveal the dangerous slide to authoritarianism.”
On the two conspiracy theorists with whom he moved for a few days,
“… they’re ordinary folks who are good people, who have just been fed this diet of lies. They’re completely different to the politicians who are motivated by their own power, who realized that they can create fear by spreading these lies through the most effective propaganda machine in history”: social media platforms.
In light of the latter, the initiation factor of the sequel becomes apparent. Using Borat as a successful “brand” with existing high reach, engagement and recall was a straightforward “given” for SBC to leverage as an available platform in order to convey his political message to a mass audience.
It is the artist’s call after all. However a couple of reservations can still be put forth regarding this approach to developing his “product.”
Despite the criticism that Borat received on Kazakhstan’s portrayal in terms of misrepresentation and stereotyping, the country as a ‘place’ played a fundamental role in that story. It could have been an imaginary non existent place indeed, the fit or story course wouldn’t have differed. In the new released sequel, Kazakhstan is more of a back element within the story; however, it was still forcibly overblown with stereotyped attributions for mere satirical purposes. If immigration/immigrants as a topic found any rationale to be featured in the first film (regardless of the way), the same does not hold for the sequel where it is a ‘gap filler’ to the story but a much needed audience ‘hook’.
In line with SBC’s intent to push people to vote against the current establishment, the method used is in overexposing competition vs. showing the two sides as equals. The only exception suggesting something ‘else’ is the baby-sitter who provides a moment of balance. SBC portrays in this sequel the America he sees through a political lens/funnel that might resonate with some Americans but not all Americans, while in the first film he treated topics from a human/social lens on a local and more international level -again regardless of any unified consensus in viewership.
The marketing campaign pushed this distinction further with a launch date a week ahead of the elections, interviews clarifying the intent behind the movie and active replies to reactions on the film. While Borat replying to Giuliani’s statement on his scene was an amplification of the advertising stunt to the film, SBC’s reply as himself to Trump’s comment was an assertion of his political stand.
With a rolled out plan of branded content machine of offline and online Borat-related stunts pre and during the release period (Statue airlifted into Sydney, Outdoor Yoga classes, Social media appearances, Late Night shows features), the movie campaign might have indeed generated word of mouth and viewership (mixed numbers were stated by different sources, no viewership figures were shared by Amazon), but what role did it really play in line with SBC’s objective?
“I’ve always been reluctant to be a celebrity,” Mr. Baron Cohen said, “and I’ve always been wary of using my fame to push any political views.” – Buck Ellison, The New York Times
With the “GO VOTE” film punchline, all cards were seldom laid out, meriting a fundamental question on the future of Cinema in general and its purpose as an embracing art.