The diverse and changing city of Hudson entered the
documentary realm as the subject of a 2006’s Two Square Miles, which centered
on the community’s successful effort to prevent a cement plant from being built
in the town. And now the town once again serves as the backdrop for an independent
nonfiction film, the award-winning Hudson, America, which recently
premiered on Amazon Prime Video and Kanopy.
Produced and directed by Zuzka Kurtz and Geoffrey Hug, Hudson,
America is a coming-of-age documentary that follows the lives of a group of
six first-generation immigrant high school students from the Columbia County city’s
Bangladeshi Muslim community. The teenagers are part of a group that immigrated
to Hudson in the early 1990s for low-wage work in a button factory that closed soon after their arrival, suddenly leaving them forced to deal with a shortage of manufacturing
jobs amid the anti-Muslim hostility that reared its head in the wake of 9/11.
Hudson,
America offers a glimpse into the lives of the students as they navigate
the realities of identity struggle, fear, xenophobia, arranged marriage, forbidden
love, and the apprehension over leaving their community they’ve grown up in to
attend college and make their way through life.
Hudson, America is streaming now on Amazon Prime and Kanopy.
