Awards & Screenings
2012 Cannes Film Festival: Special Screening (The Caretaker)
Best Short Documentary: Audience Award, 2013 Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival (The Mayor)
2013 Ashland Independent Film Festival (Both)
2014 Tribeca Film Institute Interactive Day (Both)
2014 Ellis Island: Special Screening (Both)
2013 Sebastopol Documentary Film Festival (Both)
2014 New York Film Festival (Both)
2013 San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (Both)
2013 San Diego Latino Film Festival (The Mayor)
The Caretaker
Synopsis
Runtime: 7 Minutes
Character Profiles
Josey Gerrish
“As soon as I came here I started caregiving. You go in and make them feel comfortable, like how you‘d want someone to treat you. Then you‘ve got a friend for life.”
Haru Tsurumoto
Haru was born in Sonoma County, California, to Japanese immigrant parents. During WWII, anti-Japanese fervor spread across the U.S. and Haru was sent to an internment camp in Poston, AZ, for three years.
The Mayor
Synopsis
Runtime: 10 Minutes
Character Profiles
Paul Bridges
“When I became friends with these people (Latinos) and started to learn their language, the doors just opened up. I saw that they were family oriented, hard workers, high morals–my eyes were opened, we’re all the same, we’re all equal, we have the same values.”
Celeste Hernandez
“In middle school that’s when it hit me, i’m in a gifted class, no Mexicans, no colored persons, just me, surrounded by white people. I want to graduate with honors, but in Georgia, you have to have papers to go to college.”
Resources
Download Discussion Guide
This 60-page discussion guide has warm-up activities, discussion questions, and worksheets for both The Caretaker and The Mayor. Also included are activities to create a safe space with your students, address stereotypes and media bias around immigration issues, as well as a guide of how to create and share personal immigrant narratives on the Immigrant Nation story hub.
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Facing History and Ourselves
Facing History and Ourselves provides ideas, methods, and tools that support the practical needs, and the spirits, of educators worldwide who share the goal of creating
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Migration Policy Institute
The Migration Policy Institute (MPI) is an independent, non-partisan, non-profit think tank dedicated to the study of the movement of people worldwide.
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Immigrant Nation
The Immigrant Nation online story hub is a powerful tool that enables you and your community to create and share personal immigrant narratives in a new and dynamic way.
Watch the Films
The Caretaker (Full Film)
The Mayor (Full Film)
The Caretaker + The Mayor DVD
The Caretaker + The Mayor: Two short films on Immigration in the U.S. is being distributed on DVD through New Day Films, an educational distributor that has been providing high-quality social issue films for over 40 years to Universities and Colleges. These powerful short films are being used in classrooms focusing on: Immigration and Border Studies, Latin American Studies, Gerontology, Human Rights, American Studies, Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology, Law, and more.
The DVD has Spanish Subtitles, Closed Captions, and both short films, The Mayor and The Caretaker. The films come with a free educators guide that is full of activities, questions, and framework for guiding conversations around the complex issues the films tackle, just scroll up and download the guide!
Streaming for Institutions
Easily stream The Caretaker + The Mayor to your University, College, or organization through Kanopy Streaming. Purchase a one or three year license to stream the film to your students in high-definition and share the film across your academic community in just a few clicks.
FILMMAKER
Theo Rigby is a director, cinematographer, and interactive storyteller based out of San Francisco. He has been creating stories focusing on the immigrant experience in the United States for over the last decade and is the founder of iNation Media. Theo recently finished Waking Dream, a short documentary series about young undocumented people with DACA permits that was funded by ITVS and distributed on the IndieLens Storycast Youtube channel. He is currently in production on Sanctuary Rising, a feature documentary about the faith-based Sanctuary movement. Theo’s past projects include Immigrant Nation, The Caretaker, The Mayor, Marathon, and Sin País, which have been nationally broadcast on POV, showcased on the New York Times, and screened at film festivals around the world. Theo has been recognized with an Immigrant Rights Leadership Award from the City of San Francisco, is a 2018 JustFilms Rockwood Fellow, 2020 Jewish Film Institute Fellow, 2021 Logan nonfiction fellow, and won a Student Academy Award for his film Sin País. His work has received support from the MacArthur Foundation, Tribeca Film Institute, ITVS, San Francisco Foundation, and the Emerson Collective among other foundations. Theo graduated with a M.F.A. in Documentary Film from Stanford University and before making films was an award-winning photojournalist working for major newspapers and magazines around the world.
CONTACT