The documentary “The Golden Venture: A Journey into America’s Immigration Nightmare” is being screened this Sunday in Nyack by the Rockland Family Shelter and other organizations. It follows up on the survivors from the freighter that ran aground off Queens in June 1993, with 286 smuggled Chinese immigrants aboard. The film’s web site has a nice collection of written material about the incident, the media frenzy and the pertinent immigration issues.

The director, Peter Cohn, and editor, Thavi Phrasavath, will take questions after the 4:30 p.m. screening at the Nyack Center. Co-sponsors are the Rockland Immigration Coalition, the Organization of Chinese Americans, the Nyack Center, Asian Women Allied in Kinship and Equality, and the Rivertown Film Society. A donation of $6 is requested.

Below is a 2006 Journal News article about the film. Let us know if you’ve seen the movie and what you thought.

May 2, 2006

Golden Venture revisited

Yonkers filmmaker shares horror stories of ‘93 immigrants

Hannan Adely The Journal News

YONKERS – Hundreds of Chinese men and women huddled under blue blankets on a Queens beach shivering from the cold, after their immigrant-smuggling ship ran aground in 1993 and they jumped into the icy water. Ten drowned trying to get to shore.

The image of the Golden Venture passengers that the media aired around the world stuck in Peter Cohn’s mind. Later, when he learned some of the passengers were held in jail for up to four years, he became outraged.

“These immigrants who went through hell, instead of being welcomed had been thrown in jail,” said Cohn, 50, a Yonkers resident and filmmaker.

Cohn decided to capture on film the ongoing struggles of the survivors, who faced separation from family, deportations and jail time, and who still fear they will be sent back to China because of their uncertain immigration status. The documentary he directed, “Golden Venture,” is now showing at the Tribeca Film Festival in Manhattan.

Cohn took a break from media interviews and class work – he is studying to be a high school teacher at Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry – to talk about the film. Cohn, who lives with his wife and two children in the city’s Park Hill neighborhood, believes Golden Venture passengers were mistreated and should get permanent status in this country. Still, he said his film is not intended as propaganda.

“It’s not a Michael Moore movie,” he said. “I want the audience to draw their own conclusions.”

During filming, Cohn was moved by the plight of survivors like Yan Li, a passenger who was deported after spending two years in jail, and was arrested, fined, beaten and sterilized in China.

Li, who changed his name after the Golden Venture experience, eventually paid $50,000 for a second illegal passage into the United States, using a fake visa to fly into the country. He now works as a chef at a Chinese restaurant in Arkansas and was a key character in Cohn’s documentary.

The end of the film shows Golden Venture passengers still fighting to become permanent residents. Then-President Bill Clinton pardoned them from jail in 1997, but their future here is still unclear.

“I think it’s crazy after going through what they went through to get here, after having been hardworking, law-abiding Americans, that they still face uncertainty,” Cohn said.

The film is especially relevant now in light of the heated national debate about immigration reform. Cohn hopes it will be shown to a broader audience on TV.

“Golden Venture” is Cohn’s second feature film. In 1996 he released “Drunks,” a well-received film set in a Manhattan Alcoholics Anonymous meeting starring well-known actors such as Richard Lewis and Faye Dunaway.

Cohn is a former newspaper reporter who co-founded a satirical publication, “Off the Wall Street Journal,” and later began writing screenplays. He plans to continue filmmaking while he begins a new career as a teacher.

While he doesn’t have any proposals yet for future films, he suspects life at the head of a classroom might provide a source of inspiration. For now, he’s still enjoying the fruits of his years of work on “Golden Venture.”