On Tuesday, April 8, the Humanities Institute, in collaboration with The VocalizED Identity Crafting and Exploration (VOICE) Research Lab, hosted Dr. Mindy Fried and screened her self-produced film, “Open Your Heart: Immigrant Stories from Boston and Beyond.” The event aimed to highlight immigrants’ stories and voices through theater.
Michael Rubenstein, the director of the Humanities Institute at Stony Brook University and an associate professor in the Department of English, kicked off the event by introducing Dr. Neisha Terry Young, the director of the VOICE research lab and an assistant professor in the Department of English.
Dr. Young then introduced the rest of the panel, which consisted of Dr. Fried, Dr. Jeffrey Santa Ana, associate professor at the Department of English, Dr. Nerissa Balce, an associate professor at the Department of Asian and Asian American Studies and Angela Ochoa ’24, Stony Brook alumna, community activist and VOICE lab research assistant.
Dr. Young encouraged the audience to “listen to the [stories] and talk about its impact.” She then introduced Dr. Fried, who spoke about her relationship with the film.
Dr. Fried clarified that although she is not an immigrant herself, she has a personal connection to the film because her grandparents and parents immigrated to the United States in hopes of a better life.
“I see some of the values around family, connectedness [and trying] to support your family for doing better than they have [in the film],” Dr. Fried said.
Following the brief introduction, the film screening began.
The film was based in East Boston, Mass., and was made in collaboration with Hoopla Productions and ZUMIX student participants, who performed radio interviews with seven immigrant activists to learn more about their stories.
Dr. Fried was able to turn the immigrant activists’ stories into a play using the radio interviews. The play was then performed live by students and professional actors at Boston City Hall Plaza in June 2023. The documentary film depicts the year-long production process and showcases the behind-the-scenes work that the students put in leading up to the play, which occurs at the end of the film.
The event concluded with a discussion by the panel of how immigrants’ voices could be protected, especially with international students facing punishment for their participation in protests.
Dr. Young spoke about the idea that there are stories considered too dangerous to be seen. This may be because the stories expose corruption and injustice within the ruling regime or challenge the regime’s narrative or stance on certain issues, like immigration and free speech. She says that this may be a reason why TikTok, a popular application among teenagers and young adults, could be banned in the U.S. Her counter to this is to keep telling stories because “the stories [will] seep into you, and after a while, it comes into the discourse too just like the negatives.”
Madison Ohringer, a public humanities intern at the VOICE research lab and a senior double majoring in English and psychology, shared her reactions to the event in an interview with The Statesman.
“I found the decision to have individuals perform other immigrants’ stories especially powerful,” she wrote in an email. “It emphasized a shared sense of connection and responsibility, allowing participants to embody narratives beyond their own and, in doing so, bring them to life in a deeply empathetic way.”
Ohringer also mentioned that the film’s message resonated with her because she was able to draw parallels between the immigrant activists’ experiences and her family’s experiences.
“I’m Puerto Rican, so while technically my grandparents would be considered migrants rather than immigrants, many of the challenges depicted in the film resonated. For instance, having to learn English, adapt culturally and navigate unfamiliar systems mirrors much of what my family has experienced. Even with citizenship, the transition to the mainland comes with its own set of hardships.”
Dr. Fried, who is new to filmmaking, spoke about the process of making her film.
“[2020] was a time when the rhetoric about immigrants was becoming more negative and it was really, I would say, virulent, that there was a lot of language to describe immigrants as criminals or rapists or all these negative kind[s] of contexts,” Dr. Fried said. “We wanted to create an event that really elevated the voices of diverse immigrants and people from all over the world who are in this country and have wonderful stories to tell.”
Dr. Fried described how she chose the community to highlight in her film.
“I decided that I wanted to sustain my connection with one community. East Boston is one community in Boston that has the largest proportion of immigrants within the city,” she said.
She then explained how she turned her idea of amplifying immigrant voices into a production process.
“I approached [ZUMIX] and I said, ‘I’ve got this idea,’ and it’s kind of a scaffolded project with multiple stages… So once the young people had interviewed seven immigrant activists, I took the material from the interviews and turned it into a play,” Dr. Fried said.
After she wrote the play, she hired artistic director and coach Vincent Ernest Siders to make the play a reality. She shared that the director brought her idea to life, adding theatrical elements and once completed, the play was performed at City Hall Plaza.
Dr. Fried described how she came to the realization that making a documentary film about the process of making the play was necessary.
“What we realized is that we were only going to do the performance once,” she explained. “The story that I wanted to tell and document was the story of these young people who had gone through this whole year of training and support and had really developed a deeper understanding of immigrants in their own community and how it connected to their lives.”
Dr. Fried explained that she chose theater as opposed to other forms of media to share the immigrants’ activism stories because of the emotional impact of theater.
“I think when theater works, it really works. If it’s representative of the truth of people’s experiences, then it can be extremely powerful,” she said. “This was just an opportunity to elevate people’s experiences.”
Dr. Fried hoped that those who saw the play or the film, whether or not they were immigrants, would resonate with it.
“For people who are not immigrants and don’t have that experience, the hope is that people will feel some compassion and understanding of the experience of immigrants that’s perhaps different from their own experience in some ways and perhaps similar in other ways,” she explained.
Dr. Fried said the purpose of her film is to bring out humanity by opening people’s hearts.
“It’s important for us to talk about what’s going on right now, these days, and to stand up for humanity. The film really is about the humanity of people,” she said.
Rubenstein revealed what inspired the Humanities Institute to host the event in an interview with The Statesman.
“[The Humanities Institute] aim[s] to cultivate cultural awareness, a sense of historical responsibility and a theory and practice of democratic citizenship in our community,” Rubenstein wrote in an email.
He explained how “Open Your Heart: Immigrant Stories from Boston and Beyond” reflects the values that the Humanities Institute strives to promote.
“I think that a film like [‘Open Your Heart: Immigrant Stories from Boston and Beyond’] does that kind of work in profound ways by encouraging immigrants to tell their stories, and then [broadcasting] those stories — those experiences — to a wide audience.”
He further explained that the event supported Dr. Young’s initiative to use her work in English education to help immigrant students flourish in school.
“[Dr. Young is] helping [immigrants] tell [their] own stories, stories that are all-too-infrequently told or, when they are told, misrepresented or misunderstood, in mainstream media outlets,” he wrote. [Dr.] Young’s work gives agency to immigrant students over the stories of their lives, something which everyone deserves to have.”
