MAN AND MYTH
Local filmmakers explore life of beloved saint
Movies won’t be the only type of entertainment this year for St. Patrick’s Day at the Broad Theater in Souderton and Water Tower Cinema in Montgomeryville.
There will also be Irish dancing outside the theaters to help celebrate the holiday.
Inside, the movies will include “St. Patrick: Pilgrimage to Peace,” produced by Souderton residents David and Kathi Peters for Global Story Films.
“What drew us to the subject of St. Patrick was here’s a man that we all know about, or at least think we do. We take a day to celebrate him every year, but yet for most of us, we know virtually nothing about him,” David Peters said. “Our hope is that, especially this being St. Patrick’s Day, is that people will want to get to know this saint just a little bit better.
We wear party hats, we wear green, we drink green beer, but what on earth do we know about this man that’s shrouded in mystery named St. Patrick?”
“We celebrate this guy, but no one really, or very few people, really know his story, and it’s a fascinating one,” Kathi Peters said. “When you really find out what he was all about, it’s pretty phenomenal what he did.”
Many people have said they’d like to visit Ireland, which the movie gives a good view of, she said.
“You get to really see the country, obviously from the perspective of the story, but visually, it’s just beautiful,” she said.
The documentary will be screened at the Broad Theater at 4:30 and 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, March 17, St. Patrick’s Day. It will run at 4:40 and 7 p.m. March 19, 20, 21, 22, 24 and 25 at Water Tower Cinema. A question and an
swer period with the Peters’ will follow the screenings on March 19 and 20.
The Irish dance troupe Pride of Erin will be performing outdoors, weather permitting, at 6 and 7 p.m. Wednesday, March 17, at the Broad Theater and 4 and 6:30 p.m. Saturday, March 20, at Water Tower Cinema.
The Pride of Erin School
of Irish Dance has taught traditional Irish dance to dancers as young as four and as old as 84, Kristy Wharfe, the school’s co-director, wrote in answer to an email for this article. Classes are held in Souderton, Feasterville, Holland and online, she wrote.
“Our dance school typically performs over 50 shows during the month of March, at area nursing homes, restaurants, schools, weddings, and many other community events. Our last show was in early March last year, before everything shut down,” she wrote.
“We had 43 performances canceled last year.
Sadly, we are still not able to entertain the residents at nursing homes or the kids at schools via in-person shows, but we have a few shows at outdoor venues
this March. Our dancers are thrilled to be able to perform again. Dancing on St. Patrick’s Day is the highlight of the year for many of our dancers and we used to have shows from 7:30 a.m. until 10 p.m. at night on that day — back to back to back shows with so many laughs and memories,” she wrote. “We are thrilled to be able to dance at the theaters this year as this is the last St. Patrick’s Day before many of our dancers head off to college!”
Persons coming to other movies at the theaters can also stop and watch the dancers, as well as other people being able to see the outdoor performances, Kathi Peters said.
Attendees will have a chance to give a donation to the school, the Peters’ said. Each year the school raises funds to help students who love to dance, but could not without assistance afford related expenses such as costumes, shoes and travel, the Peters’ said.
“Our hope is that, especially this being St. Patrick’s Day, is that people will want to get to know this saint just a little bit better.”
— Co-producer David Peters
President Joe Biden has talked the talk on refugees, but he refuses to walk the walk. Or, more specifically, sign some basic paperwork.
As a result, more than 700 refugees already vetted, approved and booked on flights for the United States -and who’d subsequently sold their belongings and vacated their homes -- have been left in limbo.
A month ago, Biden told Congress that he was taking “emergency” action to quadruple the refugee restrictions for fiscal 2021 to 62,500, up from Donald Trump’s record-low level of 15,000. Biden also said he was removing discriminatory eligibility criteria that Trump created last year. These restrictions effectively excluded most refugees from Muslim and African countries -- even those the U.S. government had already screened and approved for resettlement.
Expanding the pool of eligible refugees was “justified by grave humanitarian concerns and is otherwise in the national interest,” the Biden administration explained. Human rights advocates and political allies hailed the announcement as a much-needed step in helping the United States recover its moral standing in the world.
Then, perplexingly, Biden didn’t sign the document required to put his own announced policy into effect.
Biden’s own State Department apparently expected this simple bureaucratic task to be completed weeks ago: The department booked, and has since canceled, flights for at least 715 refugees previously cleared for admission, according to resettlement agencies. As it happens, foot-dragging in issuing a “presidential determination” is the same stunt that Trump pulled in 2019 and 2020, when he also wanted to wriggle out of a public commitment.
“Biden has been saying all the right things, but looking at his actions, when it comes to refugee resettlement, nothing has changed since the Trump administration,” said Mark Hetfield, president and chief executive officer of the refugee resettlement agency HIAS. “Nothing.”
So far, the White House has offered no explanation for Biden’s delay. When I asked, a spokesperson sent me a contentfree statement: “The President is committed to strengthening the operations of the United States Refugee Admissions Program. While no firm numbers have been finalized, the President’s view is clear: This program will reflect the generosity and core values of the United States, while benefiting from the many contributions that refugees make to our country.”
It’s possible that the holdup is related to the surge in migration at the southern border. Maybe the White House worries that voters won’t understand the difference between the refugee process (in which applicants have undergone years of waiting and vetting) and the asylum process (in which applicants show up at the U.S. border, and only then begin their application and screening).
The public believes Biden has already lifted the refugee ceiling; only those desperate refugees who were recently unticketed know otherwise.
Among them are Sixste and Nimbona Uwizeyimana, two brothers who fled violence and persecution in the African country of Burundi. They applied to be resettled about a decade ago. They have since passed interviews, background checks and medical exams conducted by officials from the United Nations and the U.S. government. Finally, three weeks ago, they were cleared for resettlement and booked on a flight to the United States. The brothers gave away their mattresses and blankets, and Sixste sold the small shop he was running.
Then, two days before their flight was scheduled to leave, the State Department canceled their tickets, saying Trump’s restrictive policies were still in place after all. The family is bereft. They cannot understand how a new president -- who has spoken so glowingly about immigrants in general, and refugees in particular -- would give false hope to families such as theirs.
“We just wish he could see the hurt that’s been caused from this back and forth,” said their niece, Nelisse Niyongabo, herself a refugee who arrived in 2008. “You know, we just wish that he’d honor what he said he’d do.”