Unbowed: Omar Bah, refugee advocacy, and the Rhode Island story - Screening via newportFILM in PVD

EVENT LINK!  https://newportfilm.com/films/unbowed/

This episode introduces the documentary Unbowed, a Rhode Island-centered film about Omar Bah, his journey from the Gambia to resettlement in Providence, and the founding of the Refugee Dream Center. It also explores how the film team captured both the personal and policy realities of refugee life during a politically charged era.Bill Bartholomew is joined by co-directors David Wells and Mae Gammino, along with Omar Bah himself, whose lived experience anchors the film and the conversation.

Transcript

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Bill Bartholomew 0:00

Welcome into Bartholomew Town. It's Bill Bartholomew. And we've had a longstanding now for a couple of years, a great relationship with Newport Film here on the podcast. And that has allowed us to profile and kind of go deep on not only some of the upcoming documentaries, the Newport Film screening, but really some of the questions that those documentaries then provoke. And that's been the best part of that work that we've done through that partnership, at least from my standpoint. And today we've got a documentary that is super local. The subject is someone who the Bartholomew town audience is definitely familiar with through work at the Refugee Dream Center, uh, through a congressional run, uh has been on the show a couple of times. Um but this is just sort of one of those moments where, well, a lot of things that are distinctly Rhode Island came together here, and now this film is going to be available for the public to see coming up later this month through a Newport film presentation. So before we continue any further, I just want to introduce uh everyone who's on the the taping today. We'll start with David and then I'll set up what it is we're talking about.

SPEAKER_02 1:05

Hi, it's nice to be here. Thank you, Bill. My name is David Wells. I'm a filmmaker in Providence, Rhode Island, and I'm one of two directors on this film.

SPEAKER_01 1:14

Hi, Bill. It's May. Thank you for having us on. My name is May Gamino, and I'm the other director of Unbowed.

Bill Bartholomew 1:24

Oh, I think uh Omar, you're muted. The classic it's like we're in COVID again or something. Here we are.

SPEAKER_00 1:30

Hey Bill, this is Omar Ba. I'm the subject of the film Unbowed, and uh I'm the founder of the Refugee Dream Center and originally from the Gambia. I came as a refugee.

Bill Bartholomew 1:41

Alright, so I want to read just an executive summary here of uh Unbound. It's a documentary film tracing the journey of Dr. Omar Ba, a Gambian journalist who fled government torture and regime bounty to be resettled as a refugee in Rhode Island. The narrative follows his transformation into an advocate and national leader for refugee communities through his founding of the refugee dream center in Providence. Um I uh I guess this is a question for the filmmakers. How did how did this story fall into your area of interest to begin with?

SPEAKER_01 2:13

Well, I was um it was during the first Trump administration, and there was a lot of um information out there in terms of uh press around refugees and immigrants and a lot of inaccurate information. So uh there was a panel discussion occurring, and Omar was a panelist, and I, just as a private citizen, went to become more informed about the subject. And I met Omar at that point, and I was taken with his story and the work that he was doing at the time. The um RDC was a fledging organization. I told David about it. David and I had done some work together, and we went and visited with Omar, and when we were discussing um the Refugee Dream Center, David and I talked with him and said we'd love to do a piece about the Refugee Dream Center. And then that actually, as we became closer with Omar and Teddy, his wife, who's also the co-founder, we realized there's a larger story here. Especially with what um Trump had been saying uh during that time, and the elevated profile of refugees and immigration was on the table as never before. So that's how it started for David and for myself.

SPEAKER_02 3:29

And I became very quickly engaged, sure. I became very quickly engaged simply because Omar is such a strong personality, as you well know, Bill, um, and has such a great story and has been such an important leader in the refugee community even back then. Again, as May said during the Trump administration, all of those strengths have and those important roles he's played have just continued to this day. And it was an opportunity to tell his story, but frankly, it was an opportunity to put a face on refugees in a way that a lot of media doesn't always do. Um, here's somebody who's very proactive, who's very influential, who really makes a difference, and is neither a rich tech billionaire nor some, you know, sympathy-inducing refugee. He's really somebody who's pushing for refugees to do a lot of the work themselves to build their community together. And it it was just amazing then and going through the process of filming, as May was alluding to, we just discovered more and more as we went on.

SPEAKER_01 4:29

Please and and the you know, as David said, the uh a lot of the time when you see media uh have coverage of immigrants and refugees, they do it for extremes. They they either do these outside success stories or they do um the most um trope advancing narratives that really don't get at the heart of the majority of people when they're going through this resettlement process, what their life is like. Quite frankly, all of us, Bill, David, myself, we're all children of immigrants. Some of us are children of refugees, and so it's the it's the majority of these stories that our forebears had that Omar's very much resembles in what he did when he came to this country and his very unique way of creating services and the way in which he actually utilized services that we had in Rhode Island that he was able to take advantage of. Rhode Island is a really special place. Providence is a special place. And I think, you know, Omar is unique in in many ways, and yet he recognizes that who he is isn't necessarily who every individual is that comes to this, comes to Rhode Island as an immigrant or refugee. And so he created services that every person at every level can access in a way that really I don't think has been done before, which is another reason why he's so unique in what the RDC does.

Bill Bartholomew 5:59

Yeah. Omar, and without, again, we're I don't want to, you know, give away the documentary. Um so it's always it, you know, navigating this from the standpoint of this moment right now, you know, without even putting a name to it, if if if you don't want to, but uh it's it's no doubt an a moment that we haven't seen in in our lifetime in this country, that's for sure, and probably in on a global basis, it's something that many people are familiar with, though. So from your standpoint, how difficult is is this moment in the work you're trying to do as this uh country that is intended to be by design a refuge is now turning more and more into a place that is hostile.

SPEAKER_00 6:48

Yeah, thanks thank you, Bill. I think I see it from two perspectives. One is um the difficulty caused by uh the powers that be and um but the goodness that comes from the community, the people, the real the American people, the neighbors who've shown so much solidarity, so much goodness and goodwill, and that has been made a difference. From the first uh from 2016 to now, I mean, of course it has been an interval, but policies have been similar in both two Trump administrations. So it's been difficult, of course, you know, especially the second one. I mean, the first one, when I met May, as she indicated, it's it was at a actually a conference on uh on the denial of the Muslim ban, you know, we had all these new policies, you know, people getting arrested at the airport. And we had a conference, Northeast conference, and talking about issues, people came from all Northeast, you know, of the United States to attend that panel. It was really, really an eye-opening moment where it gave me renewed courage because not only the courage of having the opportunity to speak about this, but the fact that I was you know building a fledgling, uh an imaging organization, but the fact that I had so much support from the community, from the neighbors, people willing to stand with us, it became more like all of us rather than us and them. So it is the same thing that continued actually even stronger. People standing, say not in our name. It is still the same America, actually, even better. That people have always thought of, you know, the place of uh the American dream where people of diverse communities exist rather than the racist narrative or rhetoric that we currently see that gives so much, so much courage to certain uh corners of the political discourse. But so basically for me, my story was about this, the the goodness that was done to me and how I was able to leverage and utilize that energy into supporting or serving others. And it's been that's really what motivates that gets inspiring me the the collaboration and the the goodness that it uh it it it gets out of people to step into action.

Bill Bartholomew 12:23

Yeah, no, that's a beautiful answer, and I think that's probably good the the the only way to look at this through a comforting lens, right? And an optimistic uh lens, so it's certainly appreciated. How much were you uh to each of the directors with the co-directors, how much were you able to capture that spirit in this documentary in terms of you know the the reality of the community level and what seems maybe on a macro level to be a hostile moment, the opposite's actually kind of true when you really drill down. Were you able to capture that?

SPEAKER_02 12:53

Not to give away any any too much in the film, but I just will simply say that, and I'm not from Rhode Island. Uh I actually grew up in California in Los Angeles, a very different media environment. And I was amazed throughout the process what unique things happened that were so Rhode Island about the community coming together and people supporting the RDC. Um access that we got and the very overt emotional journeys that people would take us on, both Omar and Teddy, but also other families that we interacted with who were part of the refugee dream center process. Um really is a lot of only in Rhode Island stuff, at least from my experience.

Bill Bartholomew 13:33

Amazing. Well, that's the that now there's a tease right there in terms of getting people out to the uh the screening.

SPEAKER_01 13:39

I I think that, you know, um what David talks about is that uh Omar inspires trust and provides trust to people, especially those he's helping serve. And with that, um they came to trust us very, very quickly. And David and I were very sensitive to the fact that, you know, when you've been forcibly displaced from your home, and I want people on Rhode Island to really think about that, think about the fact that if someone came and you had to flee, you had nothing and you came to a new country, you really are reliant on the kindness and goodness of others. And Omar gets that and understands that, and that's something that filters throughout his organization. And so we were we were mindful of the sensitivity of this. And we were allowed into homes. We were allowed into Omar's home. The documentary has um a nice representation of what goes on in the RDC, but it also is very intimate about Omar and his life and his family, and who he is as a person. And um, we came to really respect and love Omar a great deal over this process. I mean, we started that the documentary during his first administration and and we ended it um with Trump's second. But the primary uh content is from a time when there was a lot going on in Omar's life personally and professionally. So it's um it's not like a news segment. This really is an intimate story of not only what they do at the RDC, but who the people are and the things that Omar and his his wife and family were dealing with that year, unrelated to the RDC too. And then we also have a really lovely ending that I'm not gonna give it away, um, but it loops back into Omar's beginning. Um it's a 50-minute documentary, and we're gonna have a really lovely QA afterwards, an extended one, about 30 to 40 minutes. And it's gonna be David and myself, Omar and his wife Teddy, who's the co-founder and executive director now, and also Amy Romero, who's chief legal counsel for the Lawyers Committee of Rhode Island, who is a civil rights attorney, because we'd love for people to be able to have an opportunity to not only see Omar's story, but in the context of what's happening today, and also understand policy and really understand what they could do to help refugees and immigrants today in Rhode Island because we have such a beautiful community here in Rhode Island, and there are many things that we can do, but we want to make sure that people understand exactly what they can and can't do legally and be properly informed rather than getting their information from social media and stuff like that.

Bill Bartholomew 16:18

Yeah, that I couldn't agree more. Trusted partnerships for this kind of information have never been more important. Uh this community will have the opportunity to get that from Newport Film on, let me make sure I get the date exactly right, Tuesday, October 6th. I was gonna say that. Tuesday, October 6th, 6 30 p.m. at Hope High School. Uh the doors open at 6 o'clock. It's a free event with that Q ⁇ A panel following the screening of the film unboat. It's again that documentary that I think a lot of us need to see or need to feel, right, right now. It's just it's an important moment to f to that that's my takeaway. It was an important thing to feel this documentary. My executive summary there. Thank you all so much for being on today and uh look forward to that screening coming up in just a couple of weeks, almost October, my God.