Prisoners Among Us: Italian-American Identity & World War II

Starring:Prisoners Among Us
Studio: Highland Ent.
Product Type: DVD

Description

This feature length documentary explores Italian ethnicity in America from several distinctly personal perspectives. In the decades preceding WWII, hundreds of thousands of Italians flocked to these shores in hopes of starting new lives in a land that promised freedom and opportunity. They immigrated through the Great Hall of Ellis Island, in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty and spilled out into the streets of New York City and beyond in anticipation of a kind of renaissance. This documentary is overflowing with interviews, historical detail, photographs, literature, music, poetry and analysis.

Customer Reviews:

"You can't have freckles because you are greasy!".......2005-08-26

I knew that Italian Americans suffered in the early 1900s due to the insipid eugenics movement. However, this documentary showed that they suffered more than that. They have been lynched, deported, accused of treason, etc. This movie is powerful in that it shows that some of them were interned during World War II. They really had it bad. This documentary interviews scholars and lay people, men and women.

Still, it ran a bit long and was a bit repetitive. As much as they suffered in the early 1900s, they still did not face Jim Crow as blacks did. They could live in neighborhoods and attend schools of which African Americans at that time could not dream. This documentary interviews one Japanese-American scholar. However, while SOME Italian Americans were interned, MANY Japanese Americans were interned. Only non-naturalized Italians were interned; even naturalized Japanese Americans were interned. Thus, though Italian Americans were treated worse than most other whites, they were still treated better than people of color. This documentary fails to acknowledge that.

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