The New Paltz Oracle (SUNY – New Paltz newspaper)
October 4, 2018
by Matthew McDonough

Boston based film-making group Community Supported Film presented their new collection of films, titled “New Immigrant and Refugee Visions” at SUNY New Paltz on Wednesday, Sept. 26. The event was hosted in Lecture Center 100 and was presented by Michael Sheridan, the founder of the organization.

The “New Immigrant and Refugee Visions” Project (NIRV) was created with this vision in mind by having 10 new immigrants and refugees create short, documentary films about other new immigrant and refugees.

NIRV and Community Supported Film were created to let underrepresented people groups tell their own stories. This desire originated when Sheridan was doing filming in Bangladesh for an organization called Oxfam America, and he took notice of how odd the filmmaking process was for that project.

“I had a fantastic Bangladeshi cameraperson, a fantastic Bangladeshi sound person, and other assistants, and my question to myself was, ‘”What was the white guy doing there?’” Sheridan said. “Because they were perfectly capable of telling the story that I was sent there… to tell.”

Original publication in The New Paltz Oracle online.