The Grange Hall in West Tisbury hosted a live screening of “Waiting to Continue,” a locally produced documentary focusing on the 48-hour Vineyard stay of 49 unexpected migrants who were flown to the Vineyard from Texas in September.
About 50 people attended the half-hour screening last Thursday.
Directed by Ollie Becker, Tom Ellis, and Tim Persinko and produced by Circuit Films, a division of West Tisbury-based Circuit arts, the documentary had screened once before in March at the Martha’s Vineyard Film Festival.
“Waiting to Continue” includes interviews with multiple Vineyarders involved in organizing shelter, food and other resources for the migrants, who were falsely promised that they would be flying to Boston and eligible for employment and financial benefits. Instead, they disembarked from a pair of Dornier 328 turboprop aircraft to the Vineyard, with no support network and no prospects.
After 48 hours of migrants talking with authorities and volunteers and staying at St. Andrews Episcopal Church in Edgartown, they were sent to Joint Base Cape Cod in Sandwich.
Nathan Briggs, an Islander from Venezuela, went to St. Andrews to translate for the migrants the morning of their arrival. In the film, Briggs recalls that after the migrants left, he felt conflicted.
“First there was a lot of not knowing if we kicked them off or dismissed them,” he said. “Staying in touch made it a little easier.”
The film also features interviews with migrants, including a man named Ubaldo, who returned to the island for a month after leaving.
Following the screening, directors Becker and Persinko and immigration and criminal defense lawyer Rachel Self took questions from the audience. Topics ranged from the way the directing team’s relationship evolved over the course of the film, to possible legal outcomes for DeSantis and the migrants.
Self particularly lamented “Kafka-esque” federal laws that can result in two-year wait times for processing migrant work authorization claims.
One attendee asked if any migrants were still living on the Island. Self said that four were “doing as well as they can” living in Vineyard Haven, where they have secured housing through September.
Becker, who has previously directed a project about the Vineyard’s great ponds, grew up on the Island, and said that his local background was an asset in making this film. “We were playing the ‘We’re from the Vineyard’ card—we’re not press,” he said. “We were trying to tell the story as documentary filmmakers but also as community members.”
Will Ettinger, Circuit Arts’ Box Office and Patron Liaison, says that the film not only reflects community involvement, but creates it. “Leading into the festival, there was a lot of excitement,” he said. “People generally, even the people who’d lived on this island, didn’t know anything they didn’t read in the papers. This offered an insight for islanders that they felt they sort of deserved.”
The filmmakers are not waiting to continue. Becker says that he is planning to follow-up with new footage that would show where the migrants have gone since. “All of the volunteers,” he said, “maintained some thread of contact with most of them.”
The documentary will screen again on August 24 at Grange Hall, and Circuit is also eyeing festivals and other distribution options.
This crisis is happening all over the country will millions of people entering the country illegally. The Vineyard shuttled them off as soon as possible. Most communities don’t have our resources and political connections and actually have to deal with the crisis. Hotels across the state are full of people with no job prospects, little education and who will most likely be wards of the state in perpetuity. We have lots of hotel rooms here. Why not fill up the Harbor View or Winnetu with these apparently deserving people? The answer is simple. The island wants to look the other way and pretend this crisis doesn’t exist. Goodness me, what would happen if the Possible Dreams auction next month was attended by a bunch of MS 13 members or human traffickers! That’s what’s happening all over our country.
How are you doing convincing people the US is going straight to hell?
The politics of negativism?
If you can convince enough people that the US is going to hell it will.
Trump had four long years to seal our borders, he failed
One of Trump’s many failures.
It is starting to look like he won’t be making any more Presidential Failures.
I don’t think this group felt dismissed by the temporary, efficient move to the Cape. (Decided on by our governor, not random Islanders.) Multiple people chose to move here shortly after. Why would they return if the Vineyard was so unwelcoming? The border is an important issue that needs our attention, but there’s nothing wrong with the way this was handled by locals.
John– interesting that you point out the “no job prospects” when attempting to trash these people. Let me tell you the truth as to why these people are here.
They came in the hopes of getting a job.
The world wide capitalistic system that favors the wealthy and the wealthy countries is not working for them. So they packed up their few belongings and, in many instances, their families to come to the north. They are here and the republican party relentlessly tries to put as many obstacle’s in their way of getting a job despite millions of unfilled jobs in this country
America is a great country, they know it, it really is the land of opportunity.
Indeed, the poem at the base of the statue of LIBERTY welcomes them:
“Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
But don’t take the word of “man” for it:
PROVERBS 19:17
“Whoever is kind to the poor lends to the LORD, and he will reward them for what they have done.”
But , some people think the old testament doesn’t apply anymore ( unless of course it is used to justify hostility toward the LGBTQ community)
So here is this from the new testament
MATTHEW 25:44-45
“They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’ He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’”
or this:
LUKE 3:10-11
“‘What should we do then?’ the crowd asked. John answered, ‘Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same.’”
And somehow, the major political party in this country that shamelessly lies about their embrace of liberty and freedom and Christian values turns a blind eye and a cold shoulder to those in need.
Shame on them.
May god have mercy on their souls.
No one cares about this story and the migrants illegal or not. This whole fiasco is about slapping Abbot and DeSantis and Trump and flailing righteous indignation that these so called poor people were badly treated. There will be no convictions and no indictments and MV can sit in its own debasement treating this is as ultra important.
The vast majority of the people on the Island you love do care.
You think of them as nobodies?
Yep. Making a movie about this is like Kerry negotiating with China on climate change. China is laughing all day as the useful idiot tells them not to build coal plants.
Since the Trump debacle how many Kw of coal has China put on line?
Solar?
Wind?
Hydro?
Given the same cost which power source do you prefer?
Would you be opposed to coal plant on Island?
How about drill rigs and production platforms in Vineyard Sound?
Should all forms of energy production be kept out of the sight of Eastern Europe Emmigrees?
It’s always cooler in de basement. My house was built on a concrete slab, so I didn’t have one to sit in. I installed a mini split AC instead. That way I could sit anywhere while I thought about the importance of human beings, having compassion for them, especially those who knew the harshness of escaping a difficult way to survive but with a hope for a better life. In my rumination, I also could think about how “pro-life” means different things to different people. Who needs de basement?
andy–how many times will you state that this or that will not happen only to be “potentially’ humiliated at the astounding inaccuracy rate of your predictions ?
Don’t remember them ?
Ok, ask me and I will put them up here.
And just in case you want a preview
“Hilary won” in 2016,you said — “there will not be close to 1,000 deaths from covid in the U.S”
you said–
And just for the record, andy– China does not , in any way, influence how many coal fired plants are built in the United States– That is determined by your sacred “invisible hand ” of the free market, which you endlessly pontificate is the final arbitrator of all things economic.
To say that China somehow influences the number of coal plants in the United States only shines a bright light on your “biases’ .
Read carefully Keller. I did not say China influences coal plants in the USA. I said Kerry the useful idiot tells them not to do it. I did not ask you to put up any inaccuracies. I occasionally get it wrong but mostly I am correct.
I certainly could have predicted the first 2 comments here–
Hysterical hypothetical rants about unrelated subjects, inaccurately pontificating about how poorly the legal immigrants were treated and whining about how they and or the corrupt politicians they support are the victims here.
Watch the movie guys…
Yeah, I know just about as likely as reading any of the evidence concerning any of the multiple crimes that their Fuhrer has committed.
The film is excellent and accurately portrays what happened over those days and weeks. I know this because I was there. Im not surprised by the commenters who seem to have zero empathy and compassion, and loathe anyone who does.
thanks for sharing an interesting post, this information was the price, I read it while the service wrote types of essays in my place, and I rested 🙂