"Prevail" Film [Magnetic North & Taiyo Na] by Sahra V. Nguyen
To accompany the song “Prevail (feat. Maya Hatch / prod. by Chucky Kim)” by Magnetic North & Taiyo Na, filmmaker Sahra V. Nguyen (Deported, Self-Starters) created a documentary-style work that serves as both a capsule of the APIA social justice community and a love letter to survivors of oppression. Sharmin, Foysal and the rest of the Uddin family are the main cast of a film that centers the lives of a community organizer for CAAAV: Organizing Asian Communities, a first-generation college student, and a working class Bangladeshi American family in New York City. In centering their lives as immigrant, Desi, Muslim, and working class Americans, the film portrays resilience and beauty across multiple layers of marginalization in today’s political climate.
For artist Taiyo Na, the subjects of the film strike a particular note of relevance: “These are all my worlds colliding. Sharmin works at CAAAV, an APIA Asian Americans organization that I’ve supported for almost 2 decades and aligns most with my politics. Foysal is a former student and basketball player who I taught and coached. As I got to know them better over the years, their beautiful story as a family moved me greatly. Losing their father at a young age, growing up in the projects, and through it all, being a loving family of bright scholars and activists, I felt like their story was something the world needed to see right now. Their story embodied the word “prevail.””
For filmmaker Sahra V. Nguyen, the film builds on her body of work elevating activists and creatives of color: “Asian Americans have a long history in social justice movements and the fight for civil rights. However, mainstream media tends to be extremely invested in conversative Asian narratives, which promotes stereotypes and racial segregation. It’s organizers, activists, and resilient folks like the ones in the film fighting for a better world everyday who deserve all the visibility to be seen, heard, and felt.
