Nashville Scene: Splices

"Everybody's got to have somebody to look down on," Kris Kristofferson sang in "Jesus Was a Capricorn," and the proof may be in Kim Snyder's documentary Welcome to Shelbyville -- which airs May 24 on PBS' Independent Lens series, but has a local screening with director Snyder expected to attend at 3 p.m. Saturday at the downtown Nashville Public Library. (There is a reception at 2:30.) In her film, Snyder visits Shelbyville, Tenn., in the year leading up to the historic 2008 presidential election, when racial tensions across the country were already on edge. But in Bedford County, where illegal Hispanic workers at the local Tyson Foods plant began to be replaced by hundreds of Somali refugees, the combination of economic strain, job insecurity, anti-Muslim fear and culture clash sent shock waves along every possible ethnic fault line. Snyder talks to residents, refugees, and to reporter Brian Mosely, whose articles in the Shelbyville Times-Gazette provoked an open discussion of relations between the townspeople and the incoming immigrants. The result sometimes resembles a pot whose contents stubbornly refuse to melt, even as the heat rises. The screening is free and open to the public. JIM RIDLEY

---

Related:

Share This Story