E-mail a friendSteve James
airdate March 26, 2004
Steve James directed, produced and co-edited Hoop Dreams. For his effort, he won several prestigious awards and an Academy Award nomination. He then returned to Illinois to reconnect with a troubled young man whom he had mentored 10 years earlier. The resulting feature-length Stevie won awards at film festivals worldwide. James is one of the filmmakers involved in the new PBS series, The New Americans.
Steve James
Tavis: Steve James is an award-winning filmmaker whose latest work is an expansive look at immigration as seen through the eyes ofeight immigrants and their experiences coming to America. In addition to being executive producer of the series called 'The New Americans,' which begins, again, here Monday night on PBS, he's also the director of one the episodes, called 'Nigerian Story.' Here's a scene from 'Nigerian Story.'
Which one is better? The Nigeria way, you will have
just been there and one day, you have TB over here
that you knew, that your system is not strong enough.
Then you have to take something to make you to be
strong enough to withstand it. Which is better?
I think this is better.
Going too long, this...
Tavis: Steve James, nice to see you.
Steve James: Nice to see you.
Tavis: One of the stars of 'Coming to America,' the movie, Arsenio Hall was on this show some weeks ago. One of my favorite movies, it's a funny movie, but there's nothing funny about this story of these people coming to America. So I'm glad you're here to talk about the struggles that these immigrants have trying to assimilate into this place called America. Before I get into, more specifically, the 'Nigerian Story' that you specifically directed, let me ask you, since the series premieres Monday night on PBS--over 3 nights, I believe--break down for me in short what each episode is about.
Steve: Well, actually, what we've done with the series is something that's not often done, which is we've taken stories from 5 different places in the world, 7 different directors working on this series, and we've made a dramatic series that interweaves these stories, so that over the course of the 7 hours and the 3 nights on PBS next week, you will hopefully get caught up in each of these stories. And, you know, my hope is that at the end of that first night, you need to tune back in the next night to see what happens, so...
Tavis: The 5 places are... Nigeria?
Steve: Yeah. Israeli-occupied West Bank, India, the Dominican Republic, and...and... Can we do that over? Mexico.
Tavis: Mexico. Yeah. I knew it would come to you in a second. Mexico's the fifth place. Let me ask why--I think I understand, and certainly I can make the case, but it's your series, not mine--why those 5 places? Why those 5 reasons?
Steve: Well, when we conceived of this series, we knew that we wanted to really take the pulse of immigration in America today, the contemporary scene. And to do that, you know, we knew we couldn't avoid Mexico. You can't really do a series about contemporary immigration in America without Mexico. But we wanted to really try to reflect the immigration scene as it is, and today it's not European immigration that dominates. It's many other places in the world, the emerging world, people coming to America.
Tavis: To what just happened here 30 seconds ago, maybe that was Freudian. The fact that neither you nor I could remember that Mexico was the fifth place. I mean, I've researched and read and prepared for this conversation. You did the series, and Mexico was the place that we could not think of. Maybe, in fact, we couldn't think of it because it is so commonplace nowadays to see immigrants, not just here in California, but indeed, around the country, where certainly in the border states we see so many immigrants from Mexico. Is there a message in the fact that we couldn't remember that because it's so commonplace?
Steve: Well, maybe. It could also be I just was a little nervous. But I think that, you know--I think that when people think of immigration in the United States...
Tavis: They think Mexico.
Steve: They think of Mexico. But really, America today has more immigrants than at any other time in its history, and people are coming from all over the world to America. I mean, the face of America is truly changing to a degree it never has before.
Tavis: Talk to me now specifically about the piece that you did, the story of these Nigerians.
Steve: Well, we knew that we wanted to tell a refugee story, and we also knew that we wanted to tell an African immigrant story. So really, we were able to combine both of those interests in the story of the Nigerians. These are people from Ogoniland, which is a southern province in Nigeria whose land has been despoiled by pollution from drilling of oil, and when they protest against the degradation of their homeland, they eventually were violently opposed by the government and forced to flee and become refugees. And we pick up the stories of 2 different families, the Nwidors and Barine Wiwa-Lawani and her children as they are in a refugee camp and then come to America to start a new life.
Tavis: You know, I could be wrong about this, and it wouldn't be the first time I was wrong about something. It won't be the last time, I suspect. I would think that perhaps at another time--I don't know when necessarily that time might be--but even with people who are of a darker hue, who have melanin in their skin from a place called Nigeria, I would think that the wonderful story that you've told of their struggle, of the challenges, and of their journey, I would think at a different time, that story might be more palatable. It might be more acceptable. People might be more amenable, more affable, you know, to being moved and to accepting and to being--and to feeling because of a story like this. I wonder, though, if that might not be the end result, with all due respect to your fine work, because of the attitude that so many Americans have now about immigrants for all the reasons that you and I both know.
Steve: Right. Well, I think that America is incredibly conflicted about their feelings towards immigration, and I think if you look throughout the history, you see, you know, an ebb and flow of feelings both for and against immigrants in coming to this country. We certainly have seen it in recent years, and we saw it during the course of filming this series. And I think one of the things that we set out to do with the series was to really take you intimately inside the lives of a group of immigrants coming from different places in the world, coming for different reasons, so that you would maybe come to understand and feel something for what they go through in coming to America, and just as importantly, really, is to see America through their eyes. That's one of the reasons why we started these stories in their home countries or in the refugee camp, in the case of the Nigerian story. We really wanted to bind you to these people that we're following and have you be with them as they come to America.
Tavis: After all this work, this 7 hours, though, of this series, do you think that Americans are prepared, are positioned, are open to receiving what it is that you are trying to offer, number 1, and number 2, let me just back up. What are you trying to offer? What do you want folk to get out of this?
Steve: Well, I think, you know, when we started this series, I was someone, despite my liberal politics, who wasn't immune to some of the fears and concerns about, well, you know, what's going to happen to America as it becomes more diverse, I mean, if I was honest with myself. And I think the act of making this series, for me, personally, and I guess I hope for people watching the series, is that they will see... By seeing people up close and personally and getting to know them and see what they go through, that's the best antidote, I think, to prejudice and fear that many people have about immigrants. And I think that one of the revelations for me in the series was really coming to see that, you know, as corny as it sounds, is that America is a nation of immigrants and that the very character of what America is has been defined by people coming from other places to this land--not always immigrants. African Americans. I mean, so much of our culture is defined by the melding together of so many different cultures from around the world.
Tavis: Of course the distinction is, as you well know--to quote Dr. Maya Angelou in her 'Morning,' these Africans you referenced were bought, stolen, sold into slavery--
Steve: Exactly.
Tavis: 'Arriving on a nightmare, praying for a dream.' Having said that, it is a fascinating notion, because while America is a place made up of immigrants, and we would not be, it seems to me, the great country that we are, were it not for immigrants. But having said that, you're not naive, given your 'liberal politics,' to quote you. We prefer--and I'm much more lenient, if we're gonna be honest about this--to have immigrants come from certain places and not from other places, and you've chosen to highlight those other places that we ain't so keen on and so open in terms of accepting immigrants from those places. That's--that was a bold move on your part, I think.
Steve: Yeah. Well, that was important to us because, you know, we wanted people to see the kinds of people who are coming to America that America has had the most problems with. I mean, up until not so long ago, the second-most highest number of illegal, quote-unquote, immigrants coming to America came from Ireland, but you didn't hear any complaints about that. So that was important to us, and I think we'll feel like we've really accomplished something if we have gotten people to see that these are people like themselves--American-born viewers to see people like themselves who want the same things for themselves and for their families that everybody wants. You know, at one point with Israel, in the 'Nigerian Story,' he was telling me what he wanted to do here in America, and he was talking about getting a degree, a master's degree in business, and I said to him, 'Oh, is that your American dream?' He said, 'No, that's my Nigerian dream.' Meaning--it's like--
Tavis: We all want the same thing.
Steve: We all want the same things.
Tavis: Well, I look forward to seeing the series, and I know that those who are PBS viewers look forward to seeing this series as well. It's called 'The New Americans,' and it will premiere on PBS on Monday night: 3 episodes that follows these persons, these families, from 5 different regions around the world. Fascinating stuff. I think you'll enjoy it. It starts, again, Monday night on PBS. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday night. Check your local listings. Nice to see you.
Steve: Nice to see you.
Tavis: My pleasure. Randy Quaid's up next. Stay where you are.
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