WELCOME
Lift the Lamp showcases the lives of four immigrant women living in New York City who transform their communities with their work. The film provides a personal and complex portrayal of immigration in contrast to the abstract and generalized representations often found in the media. The women, Yatna Vakharia from India, Melainie Rogers from Australia, Teboho Moja from South Africa, and Daphnie Sicre, who was born in Ecuador to Spanish and Peruvian parents, use storytelling to explore their own lives and the topics of immigration, gender, race and social class. With much humor and some tears, they beget a spellbinding tale of what it’s like to be a woman who belongs to two or more cultures in our world today.
Immigration and assimilation are deeply woven into the character of the United States, and one may even argue that they are the fabric that holds our nation together. The plurality of culture and ethnicity that makes up the American human landscape is in part responsible for the particular mix of hope and innovation that constitutes America at its best. However, immigrants are currently the target of often virulent diatribes and misrepresentations throughout the nation. Immigrants are at different times blamed for the economic crisis, higher taxes, the costly war on drugs and rising crime rates, among other national vicissitudes. While there are certainly drawbacks to immigration for the host country, it is a much more multifaceted issue that, as our history has shown, also greatly benefits and enriches society.
Lift the Lamp is as a celebration of difference. Visually it portrays women of different races, skin colors and features, whose styles in both personal dress and home decoration are an amalgamation of their cultural influences. Their accents portray variations on the English language and the ways in which we can add our own flavors, dictions and intonations as we speak. Their professional occupations take them from education to business, the arts and math, and they represent a wide array of ways in which women can engage with their communities in a constructive manner. Moreover, New York City, the fifth character in this film, provides a multicultural background as we follow the women, visiting parts of the city we have seen in hundreds of films, as well as areas that have not received the same kind of attention on screen.
Our hope for this film is that the women, immigrants and the general public who watch it will gain a deeper understanding of the complexity and richness of the immigrant experience and the ways in which it positively transforms our society and overlaps with issues of womanhood. We also believe that seeing the United States through the eyes of those who are at once insiders and outsiders will help audiences perceive American culture from a unique and insightful perspective that will enrich their understanding of the country.