by Althea D. Chen

The lives of Hispanic immigrants will be in the spotlight Thursday at a film screening at the city’s Community Youth Center at on 165 Broadway.

The East Somerville Neighbors for Change is showing “El Norte (The North)” and “A Fronteira (The Border)” in order to jumpstart a conversation between neighbors about the issues that they and their friends deal with as immigrants, said Sebastian Chaskel, one of the event’s organizers.

The idea is to have neighbors who ordinarily can’t communicate share their thoughts on common problems, he said. “We thought hard about it and we decided to have everyone come to the same table and have one big discussion.”

“El Norte,” a 1983 film directed by Gregory Nava, tells the story of two Guatemalan siblings that risk it all to cross the border between the U.S. and Mexico in search of a better life in Los Angeles, he said.

The film focuses on the reasons they decided to migrate, their journey through Mexico and their life as undocumented immigrants in the U.S. It will be shown in Spanish with English subtitles, he said.

Playing across the hall is “A Fronteira,” a 2004 film directed by Emerson College graduate Roberto Carminati. The film looks at the lives of two Brazilian families who make a similar journey and find themselves in Somerville. It will be showing in Portuguese, with English subtitles, he said.

After the movies, ESNC will bring viewers together to discuss their thoughts together. The organizers will be on hand to translate between Portuguese, Spanish, and English as the conversation proceeds, said
Daniela Perdano, another event organizer.

She said the films are a way to reach out to immigrants who generally don’t feel able to get involved in their community.

“They’re working two to three jobs, have kids, scraping by, very little time. We thought this would be a fun way to get a lot of people to come,” she said. There will be free childcare available during the screenings and afterwards during the discussion.

Chaskel and Perdano are Tufts students who are working with ESNC through a partnership between the Tufts University College of Citizenship and Public Service and the Somerville Community Corporation which facilitates ESNC meetings, she said.
They are serving as interns helping to address the problem of communication between different immigrant populations. Chaskel is Columbian, while Perdano grew up in Brazil and can speak Spanish as well as Portuguese, she said.

To get the word out about the event, Chaskel and Perdano decided to rely on old fashioned networking rather than e-mail postings and flyers. They had done another showing, but attendance was low, she said.

“We flyered, not many people showed up,” said Perdano. “This time we’re sending personal invitations. We’ve been contacting a core group people and giving them personal invitations to give to their friends.”

Word of mouth has created a small buzz about the film showing that street flyering did not, said Lucia Santana, an East Somerville resident from Brazil, who is helping promote the screenings.
“I have 20 invitations to give out. Everyone will want to go!” she said.