[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8-EcYF9nac[/youtube]
Our short film followed four immigrants who currently run or ran a successful small business. Pino immigrated from Italy and runs a deli near Hunter College, Russell immigrated from Russia and owns a masonry company in Brooklyn, one of our interviewees immigrated from Vietnam and ran a nail salon, and and Jerry is an Indian immigrant from upstate New York who owned a Quiznos.
Initially our theme was education and the perspective that first generation immigrants have on educational opportunities in America. We noticed a pattern of how highly our subjects valued education, particularly when it came to their children. However, as we edited, a secondary theme emerged, family. Almost all of the interviewees talked about their family (if only peripherally), in relation to their business. It demonstration the complex dynamic that emerges in a household where one member holds such a large responsibility, a dynamic that is not specific to immigrant families, but universal to all small business families.
