This interview was conducted by Guillermina Zabala (GZ) and Sumita Chakravarty (SC) in conversation with Christina Antonakos-Wallace (CA). It has been edited for brevity for With Wings and Roots. The full version can be found on Migration Mapping.
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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 relation 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.
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.
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. I was interested in telling stories that are rarely told. I was hoping to add something to the conversation that was in short supply.
GZ: Did you have a plan on how to capture the protagonists’ 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.
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.
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 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.
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 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.
