Why You Should See Welcome to Shelbyville
By Kristin Collins, Director, Uniting NC
The scene will be familiar to most of us in North Carolina: A small Southern town where people are accustomed to knowing their neighbors. The kind of place where spaghetti is about as foreign a food as you'll find on any restaurant menu. And then, everything changes. A crowd of immigrants and refugees moves to town to work in the local poultry plant. The immigrants speak different languages, dress differently and keep to themselves. Some are Muslim. The locals, feeling threatened, start to talk about the newcomers. They are aggressive and mean, they say. They smell bad. They crowd the schools. They bring down property values. Some of the allegations are even published in the local newspaper.
This is the setting of Welcome to Shelbyville, a new documentary that Uniting NC - along with our partners, the Levine Museum of the New South and USCRI North Carolina - have begun screening in North Carolina this month. The Triangle screening is this Wednesday at Galaxy Cinema in Cary. While the film is about Shelbyville, Tennessee, it tackles an issue that has affected towns across the South: the cultural change caused by shifting demographics. It is an honest portrait of the fear and divisions that waves of immigration have caused. It is also a preview of what is possible when people work to know and understand each other.
While many of us have become resigned to animosity and no longer knowing our neighbors - in Shelbyville, people came together to change that climate. They held community meetings and potluck dinners. They talked to each other and asked honest questions. They looked past their differences and saw that they were all human, all people who wanted a good life for their families, all people who, in their own way, shared the American dream.
Shelbyville was the start of a national movement focused on strengthening communities by building bridges between natives and newcomers. Uniting NC is now one of 14 organizations in states across the country that are doing this work. Shelbyville is the model for the way that all of us in North Carolina can get involved. In Shelbyville, all it took was people's willingness to accept change and get to know their neighbors. We hope you'll join us on Wednesday.
About the film
Welcome to Shelbyville is produced and directed by Kim A. Snyder and Executive Produced by the BeCause Foundation in Association with Active Voice.
Kim Snyder is an award-winning filmmaker whose most recent film, Welcome to Shelbyville, is recipient of a Gucci-Tribeca Documentary Fund grant, a selection of the U.S. State Department's 2010 American Documentary Showcase, and will air on PBS's Independent Lens in early 2011.
BeCause Foundation ignites social change through the fusion of documentary filmmaking and creative outreach and engagement projects. www.becausefoundation.net
Active Voice uses film, television and multimedia to put a human face on the issues of our times.
Welcoming America is a national, grassroots-driven collaborative that works to promote mutual respect and cooperation between foreign-born and U.S.-born Americans.www.welcomingamerica.org
Uniting NC is the North Carolina Welcoming America affiliate and works to build more welcoming, productive and united communities by bringing together longtime North Carolinians and their new neighbors from around the world.
