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GREEN
CARD FEVER EXPOSES IMMIGRATION SCAMS
Green Card Fever, directed by Bala
Rajasekharuni, is an exposé of the illegal and unethical
traps of the immigration process in the United States, as
seen through the experience of an Indian named Murali (played
by Vikram Dasu). When the film begins, Murali is in Columbus,
Ohio. He has dropped out of a dance troupe, hoping to find
a job and to get a green card in six months. Although he
has a place to stay, the apartment is a way station for the
continual traffic of Indians overstaying their visas. When
he tries to apply for a job, his passport is seized by Parvesh
(played by Kaaizad Kotwal), who operates Project Mitra, an
underground organization that pretends to get green cards
but in actuality works as an employment agency that nets
a percentage of the salaries of the illegals. In Murali's
case, Parvesh's cut at first is 100 percent. At one of the
employment sites, a marriage bureau for Indian Americans
seeking large profits for weddings arranged with the illegals,
Murali meets Bharathi (played by Purva Bedi), a sassy Americanized
Indian who does not want her parents to marry her off as
if she were merely a piece of property. In a defiant mood
because of her parents' mercenary ambitions, she is rude
to Murali, who in turn is polite and does not get flustered
when she is impertinent. Impressed that Murali is so well
mannered, Bharathi is delighted when he happens to visit
a pet store where she is a part-time clerk. Soon she attends
the birthday party of her American boyfriend Patrick (played
by Nick Baldasare), but he and his friends are rude, showing
their ignorance and stereotypes of the customs of India.
Bharathi then flees from the party to visit Murali, a man
more after her own heart, and she starts to behave nicely.
However, Parvesh and an attorney Chan (played by Robert Lin)
are organizing a scam to sue Americanized Sikh Omjeet Singh
Purewal (played by Deep Katdare), who in turn is trying to
bust up the illegal activities of Project Mitra. Parvesh
prevails on Murali to testify falsely in court against Om
but unwisely does not give him his passport so that the judge
will have some basis to authenticate Murali's identity. Soon,
Murali is escorted out of court, arrested as an illegal;
on his way to jail, Bharathi hands him a paper containing
the word "LIAR." While in jail, a prison guard
subjects Murali to physical abuse, which brings him to his
senses. When he reappears in court, he exposes the scam.
The INS judge (played by David Alan Shaw) then remands the
case to INS attorneys for future litigation, offering Murali
a work permit so that he can stay in the country to testify
against Parvesh and Chan. Murali and Bharathi end up in each
other's arms at the end of the film. The Political Film Society
has nominated Green Card Fever as
an exposé that warns illegal aliens and others to
beware of the scams that trap those with little knowledge
of the labyrinthine maze of the immigration process in the
United States. MH
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TWILIGHT IDENTIFIES
ALLEVIATION OF POVERTY AS A BASIC HUMAN RIGHT
The Iranian revolution of 1979 repudiated the
rule of the Shah, in part because windfall revenues from oil
went to crony capitalists while the rest of the population
lived in poverty. Nearly twenty-five years later, the Shah
is gone but poverty remains, including the associated ill of
prostitution, and the subtext of many Iranian films is that
once again the regime is responsible. Twilight,
directed by Hasan Hedayat, is no exception. Mohammad Alavi
(played by Ezzatollah Entezami), a homicide inspector approaching
70, is unhappy. His wife died early in their marriage, and
his children are absent from his life. All that he does in
his workaholic existence (resembling BBC's Inspector Morse)
is to look at dead bodies and then to try to find out who is
responsible. Two bodies provide the latest mystery for him,
especially since one contains a woman's photograph that lists
two telephone numbers on the reverse side, and the other has
the same photograph, framed and larger, which is posted in
the dead man's photo studio. One of the two telephone numbers
is that of Alavi's home, which baffles him. The other number
is of a café that he often frequents. According to the
owner of the café, the dead woman is Pari, who was a
drug addict and informant for a notorious gangster, Darbandi
(played by Ahmad Majafi) who in turn is pressuring her to sell
her café--or else. Although Pari's death is doubtless
due to the gangster, without proof there is no arrest. Possibly
because Alavi's cannot find a connection with the dead woman
whom he does not recognize, Alavi becomes delusionary, seeing
visions of his wife Farangis (played by Ghaziani) and two children
as well as the dead woman and many others. Through his visions,
he solves the mystery about the dead woman's identity, but
that appears to be after he dies. Yet another subtext in the
film, which figures into the unraveling of the mystery, is
about the prejudice of Moslems toward Christian Armenians in
Iran. Accordingly, the Political Film Society has nominated Twilight for
an award as best film on human rights for 2003. MH
KEVIN
YENERALL CONTRIBUTES A SYLLABUS & WORKING PAPER
TO THE POLITICAL FILM SOCIETY
Kevin Yenerall's Surveying Social
Justice in American Films: Civil Rights, Labor Struggles & Gay
Rights is the 29th contribution to the Political
Film Society's Working Paper Series.
His contribution is the 17th in the Syllabus
Series. To obtain copies of any of the Working
Papers or Syllabi,
send a check to the Political Film Society at the above address. Working
Papers are available for a donation of $5 each.
Each contribution to the Syllabus Series is
available for $1. CLICK HERE for
more.
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