Cameras roll on immigration debate
By Lisa Kocian, Globe Staff
Marcilio Filho is a Brazilian immigrant, in the country illegally, who works three jobs to support his family. Patrick O’Brien, also a husband and father, is a landscaper who is losing customers to Filho, who can charge less because he doesn’t pay taxes.
These two fictional characters clash in Hopkinton resident Karen Webb’s “Green Grass,” which won second prize for short screenplays in the 2007 Vail Film Festival Screenwriting Competition.
Filming of “Green Grass” in Framingham and Hopkinton is scheduled to wrap this week, and Webb, 42, said she plans to submit the film to the Sundance Film Festival and other national and international competitions in the hope it will get picked up for distribution.
Image: Karen WebbThe story hits close to home for some of the cast and crew.
“I’m a resident here, but I feel discrimination,” said Lucas Constante, a Brazilian immigrant who plays Filho in the film.
Like his character, Constante came to the United States to “look for a better life” and he also works long hours (in his case at a sign-making company) to help his family back in Brazil.
“I love this story. It’s very real in my opinion,” he said between takes last Saturday in Webb’s Hopkinton neighborhood. “It tries to show both sides.”
The screenplay also is personal for Webb’s co producer Dawn Morrissey, a Waltham resident who is an immigrant from Ireland.
Years ago her first US job was on Martha’s Vineyard, where she worked alongside Brazilian, Mexican, and other Irish immigrants, she said.
Although Morrissey, 38, has a green card, many of her friends don’t, and over the years they have encountered all kinds of problems as a result — worrying about health coverage if they got hurt on the job, for example, she said. So the script immediately grabbed her.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/07/08/cameras_roll_on_immigration_debate/