Debate over Alabama's immigration law gets a taste of Hollywood politics (video)

Published: Thursday, February 16, 2012, 6:30 AM Updated: Thursday, February 16, 2012, 7:36 AM

WASHINGTON -- Hollywood entered the debate over Alabama's immigration law Wednesday with the debut of four short videos that the director said are meant to be an emotional gut-punch about the law's ill effects and to motivate people to demand it be repealed.



Chris Weitz, who also directed "The Twilight Saga: New Moon," said the series is not a documentary telling both sides of the debate, but a brief and purely human portrait of how HB56 is hurting families.

"I want to make them curious and have an effect on a visceral, emotional level," Weitz said in an interview after the videos were premiered at the Center for American Progress in downtown Washington, D.C. "These are choice bits of emotional content that could drive people to want to know more."





The videos are available at isthisalabama.org, but there are no plans for formal distribution. Each video is less than 2½ minutes, and they are clips from interviews done in Alabama. Collectively, they show Alabama as a place with a bitter past and lingering bigotry, colliding with attitudes of compassion, sympathy and religiosity.

The first segment, called "The Two Faces of Alabama," opens with the crude comments of a man at a Birmingham restaurant who interjected himself into an interview that producers were conducting at the next table. Over the objections of his female companion, who pleaded with him not to embarrass her, the man demanded to know whether one of the interviewers had "papers" and ordered him to leave the country.
"It's an attention-getter," Weitz said. "It's not a pretty part of the discussion, but it's part of the discussion."

The project is the work of the Center for American Progress, a liberal policy think-tank in Washington; America's Voice Education Fund, a Washington, D.C., advocacy group for federal comprehensive immigration reform; and Define American, a campaign co-founded by Jose Antonio Vargas, the former reporter with The Washington Post who revealed he was an illegal immigrant.

Vargas conducted most of the interviews for the series. One of the videos connects Alabama's civil rights history to immigrant rights activism, including an interview with former U.S. District Judge U.W. Clemon, Alabama's first black federal judge, who directly blames white leaders for targeting Latinos with the law.

"We are at an all-hands-on-deck moment on this issue and the voices of African American and white leaders is so important for this conversation," Vargas said in a panel discussion about the series.
The clip also incorrectly identifies Sixteenth Street Baptist Church as being in Montgomery, but sponsors said they are aware of the error and will correct it.

Alabama's immigration law, known nationally as HB56, is being challenged in court as unconstitutional interference in the federal government's control over national immigration policy. While supporters say it was meant to assist the federal government with identifying and deporting illegal immigrants, opponents say it has tarnished the state's image on the international stage and chased families out of the state, even those with children who are legal citizens.

The video series also includes an interview with a farmer who has developed a close family-like relationship with the family of an immigrant who works on his farm, juxtaposed with images of former Alabama Gov. George Wallace Jr. and former Birmingham Police Commissioner Eugene "Bull" Connor preaching segregation. The farmer says he'll cry the day the family leaves.

"People have left, but they haven't left without making scars, wounds in the local culture. That guy was not a wingnut and the only liberal in town. He's a conservative Republican and he didn't think this was right," Weitz said.


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