{"id":192984,"date":"2022-12-06T07:15:20","date_gmt":"2022-12-06T12:15:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=192984"},"modified":"2023-06-27T12:38:49","modified_gmt":"2023-06-27T16:38:49","slug":"emmy-award-winning-uconn-professor-takes-on-zero-tolerance-family-separation-with-second-pbs-frontline-documentary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2022\/12\/emmy-award-winning-uconn-professor-takes-on-zero-tolerance-family-separation-with-second-pbs-frontline-documentary\/","title":{"rendered":"Emmy Award-Winning UConn Professor Takes on Zero Tolerance, Family Separation with Second PBS Frontline Documentary"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2018, searing stories and images captured at the southern border of the U.S. burned into the conscience of an instantly outraged American public, a result of the zero-tolerance immigration enforcement policy imposed through the Department of Homeland Security under former President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n

Images of small children in tears as their parents were detained by law enforcement at the border.<\/p>\n

Stories of family members torn away from each other as they sought asylum in the U.S. from the fear of violence in their home countries.<\/p>\n

Photos of children being held, without their parents or guardians, in metal chain-link cages, huddled together under mylar blankets inside of detention centers.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter the Trump Administration enacted the zero-tolerance policy, there were thousands of kids that were separated at the border,\u201d says Oscar Guerra<\/a>, an Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker and an Associate Professor of Film and Video in the Digital Media and Design Department at UConn Stamford. \u201cMost of the families that were here in the states were eventually reunited. The problem was for some of the families that were deported. It was not until the Biden administration took office that they changed the way in which this group of people were being treated and the options that they were given.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of those families \u2013 a deported Honduran mother, and the little girl taken from her \u2013 is the focus of Guerra\u2019s latest film, called After Zero Tolerance<\/em>, which premieres on PBS\u2019s acclaimed investigatory documentary series, Frontline, tonight<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Guerra
Guerra (right) with Genesis, a young girl from Honduras who was separated from her mother under the Trump administration’s zero tolerance immigration policy. (Contributed photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A Years-Long Quest to Reunite<\/strong><\/p>\n

After Zero Tolerance<\/em> tells the story of Anavelis, who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border with her then-six-year-old daughter, Genesis, in 2018. They were forcibly separated by law enforcement at the border, and Anavelis was deported back to Honduras without Genesis \u2013 kicking off a years-long quest to reunite with her daughter.<\/p>\n

The documentary also offers insight into the work of the Biden administration\u2019s Family Reunification Task Force, a division of the same Department of Homeland Security that was previously charged with separating these families, now empowered to try to bring them back together.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was really an unprecedented effort, what they started doing, reaching for these unreachable families,\u201d says Guerra. \u201cIt was with the help of a lot of people. Everything started with the ACLU’s lawsuit, activist lawyers, and people searching in Central America \u2013 just scouring Central America, trying to find these parents. Because there were no records of these families.\u201d<\/p>\n

The separation from her mother took a toll on Genesis, who Guerra met in Kentucky, where she had been placed with extended family, communicating with her mother only through phone calls over the ensuing years and not understanding why they couldn\u2019t be together.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe’s a wonderful, wonderful kid \u2013 so smart, so bright, so kind, and so resilient, and I think that it really tells you a lot about the grit that the Latino migrant community has when you see a story like hers,\u201d Guerra says. \u201cShe starts telling the story of how she was separated and that she didn’t know what was going on. That’s what I really try to do with my documentaries. I try to go straight to the source and let them tell their own story, unfiltered, to try to find that human element that we can all connect with. I have a daughter. I cannot imagine being apart from her for a few days, let alone that amount of time.\u201d<\/p>\n

After Zero Tolerance<\/em> \u2013 which Guerra embarked on in early 2021 \u2013 marks his second collaboration with PBS\u2019s Frontline.<\/p>\n

His first short documentary for Frontline, Love, Life & the Virus<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>aired in August 2020 and followed an immigrant family from Guatemala living in Stamford, the mother\u2019s life-and-death battle against COVID-19 while pregnant with her second child, and the teacher who agreed to care for the newborn infant while the local community rallied to support the family.<\/p>\n

Love, Life & the Virus<\/em> earned Guerra two News & Documentary Emmy Award nominations and an Emmy win for Best Story in a Newsmagazine in 2021<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The film also marks a unique, first-time collaboration between UConn\u2019s Human Rights Institute<\/a>, Department of Digital Media and Design<\/a>, and Office of Global Affairs<\/a>, and Syracuse University\u2019s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Collaboration and Exploration<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cBilingual storytelling has been my jam, really \u2013 it’s the type of storytelling I enjoy doing the most,\u201d says Adriana Rozas Rivera, who was born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico. While studying for her master\u2019s degree at Syracuse\u2019s Newhouse School, Rozas Rivera was asked if she\u2019d be interested in interviewing for a job working on a collaborative documentary project with UConn\u2019s Guerra.<\/p>\n

\"Guerra
Guerra (right) with Genesis and members of his production team, including Syracuse University students Adriana Rozas Rivera and Maranie Staab and UConn alum Jonathan Iturriaga-Dasilva ’21 (SFA). (Contributed photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Connected by Guerra and producers at Frontline, both UConn and Syracuse teamed up to provide support for the project, and students from both schools were recruited to help work on the film.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs both a professor and a producer, I was trying to have academia and the professional industry combine, having our students working, having collaborations between great universities \u2013 it’s always a great opportunity,\u201d says Guerra. \u201cThis was a collaboration between Syracuse and UConn. We selected students from their program and students from our program, and they all helped out with the production duties.\u201d<\/p>\n

The opportunity to work on a project like this is an experience that students can\u2019t really get in a classroom, says Cheryl Brody Franklin, the director of strategic initiatives at the Newhouse School who assisted on the project, but that can help take classroom learning and make it real.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it’s important for students to learn the nuts-and-bolts of how to report and how to film in the classroom,\u201d Brody Franklin says. \u201cBut then, when you’re actually doing it, it’s pretty exciting to see, \u2018oh my gosh, I learned this in these four walls, but now I’m out in the \u201creal world,\u201d and I’m putting it to use\u2019 and seeing that what you learned in that classroom actually is really going to help you create this really important work. It\u2019s just impactful to see that what you\u2019re learning from your professors translate after you leave here.\u201d<\/p>\n

And the unique opportunity for the two universities to work together was \u201cincredible\u201d for a program as young as UConn\u2019s, says Heather Elliott-Famularo<\/a>, an award-winning filmmaker, head of UConn\u2019s DMD program, and herself a graduate of Syracuse University.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Digital Media and Design program was only established in 2013, and the film program, we started just three years ago,\u201d she explains. \u201cOscar has been working with Frontline, and Syracuse University\u2019s Newhouse School of Communications, which is one of the country’s most prestigious schools of communications \u2013 has been wanting to work with Frontline and found this relationship through us, with our really young program, to be able to work with it. It’s a huge kudos for us to be able to collaborate with such a prestigious program, and it says a lot about the caliber and potential future of DMD at UConn.\u201d<\/p>\n

Partnerships like this collaboration with Syracuse, as well as the growing Human Rights Film and Digital Media initiative<\/a> \u2013 a collaboration between DMD and the Human Rights Institute \u2013 offer space for a growing number of student and faculty filmmakers to explore human rights through the powerful medium of film.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt really is this remarkable marriage between HRI and DMD that’s enabled us to attract these incredible filmmakers who are working in human rights,\u201d says Elliott-Famularo, \u201cbecause they are drawn to the way we embrace and understand impact in more significant means than social media followers or how many festivals a film is juried into.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHeather has built an extraordinary program with several filmmakers who have social justice and human rights at the center of their work,\u201d says Kathryn Libal, director of the Human Rights Institute at UConn. \u201cOscar exemplifies someone who prioritizes student involvement in the creative process and wants to connect with community around his work.<\/p>\n

She says that Digital Media and Design has \u201ctransformed in recent years, welcoming collaborative cross-university work.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m delighted that the Office of Global Affairs, Fine Arts and DMD, and the Human Rights Institute were able to provide some seed funding to make this happen,\u201d Libal says, \u201cand to create a space to work with Newhouse and Frontline. Such relationships are critical to student success and to the sense of flourishing that our faculty members have.\u201d<\/p>\n

Honoring the Story<\/strong><\/p>\n

For Rozas Rivera, the chance to work on the project was what she called a \u201cno-brainer.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s rare to find fully bilingual stories out there in U.S. media, let alone stories that prioritize the voice in Spanish,\u201d she says. \u201cA lot of times we have projects that are interviews that are in Spanish, but they dub them in English. And I remember looking up Oscar’s Love, Life and the Virus<\/em> project and noticing that he had no dubbing over it. He was leaving it up to the English-speaking audience to read the captions and do the work of understanding the Spanish-language dialogue. That really hit home for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those duties included the trip to meet Genesis, where several students \u2013 including Rozas Rivera \u2013 joined Guerra to assist<\/p>\n

\"Guerra
Guerra (right) with Genesis (center) and from left to right, Maranie Staab, Jonathan Iturriaga-Dasilva ’21 (SFA), and Adriana Rozas Rivera, in Kentucky. (Contributed photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

on both the technical side of the production, as well as interacting with the family. That particular experience and the personal connection made with the family, says Rozas Rivera, has left a lasting impression.<\/p>\n

\u201cI got to meet and spend a weekend with this family \u2013 a weekend sounds little, but when you’re waking up with a family, and going through their day with them, and listening to the conversations about how difficult the separation was, and interviewing them about this, it’s such a vulnerable place for them to be in and it’s such a personal story that, by the end of it, we cried when we said goodbye to them,\u201d she says. \u201cBecause we weren’t sure when we were going to see them next, we weren’t sure when they were going to be reunited with their parents. I think that was the biggest challenge, setting aside your emotions so that you can do the reporting and do the documentary work that you came there to do, but also holding onto those emotions in a way that you’re not being inhumane \u2013 keeping that humanity, keeping that compassion there, and knowing that you’re working with people who are going through a really difficult time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finding that personal connection is a hallmark of Guerra\u2019s work, but it\u2019s not an easy road for a filmmaker, says Elliott-Famularo \u2013 it involves building relationships that last far longer than a project\u2019s production schedule.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s one thing to make a film about an issue; it\u2019s another thing to make a film about a family, an individual, a person,\u201d Elliott-Famularo says. \u201cThe kind of care and respect and trust that’s involved \u2013 it takes a very special kind of person to be able to build that space. It’s an incredible honor, as filmmakers, to be given the privilege of sharing these individual stories. They’re trusting us to do the right thing, to be ethical, but also to be respectful to their own individual beings, which is significant.\u201d<\/p>\n

Working with Guerra offered the students on the project both the opportunity to hone their technical skills as reporters and producers, but also to learn from someone who \u201cboth honored the students and honored the story,\u201d Brody Franklin says.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’m just so happy the students got to work with Oscar,\u201d she says, \u201cbecause even though I wasn’t his student, I was so impressed by his actions and his dedication to the story, and also his dedication to the students, because he wanted to give them a good experience. Obviously, it’s important to learn how to physically make the film and edit and report, but there’s so much that comes from mentoring from someone like him, and I think that that\u2019s probably the part that makes me most excited, the relationship that they got to have with him.\u201d<\/p>\n

After Zero Tolerance premieres on Frontline on Tuesday, December 6, at 10:00 p.m. Eastern on local PBS stations and will be available for streaming on <\/em>pbs.org\/frontline<\/em><\/a> and in the PBS Video App beginning at 7:00 p.m. Eastern on December 6.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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